


The Last Human: A Tale of the Pre-Classical Era

by PatchworkPoltergeist



Category: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, The Last Unicorn - Peter S. Beagle
Genre: Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, Gen, Gen 1 MLP, pre-Hearth's Warming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-23
Updated: 2014-08-25
Packaged: 2018-01-26 06:15:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 165,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1677803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PatchworkPoltergeist/pseuds/PatchworkPoltergeist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reader, in ancient days, the old lords of the world numbered in thousands. Then hundreds. Then less than even that.<br/>Now, they are found only in tapestries and fanciful ballads.<br/>The creatures are all vanished. All but one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Iron & Mortar

The human lived in the iron city, and he lived all alone.

He no longer had the small, round shape of his fat-faced youth, and when he stood to full height the human was tall and lean and spindly, like a sapling out of its first few years. He stood reared-up on his hind legs, freeing the slightly shorter forelegs to reach and grasp. His stride was smooth despite his lack of a tail for balance.

His hide was the color of bark from a yew tree and had the soft, thin delicacy of a flower petal. The majority of his body had barely any fur to protect him from the elements. A light dusting of fuzz ran along his limbs and a slightly thicker patch of hair trailed his jawline, but that was all. The only true bit of fur on him was a mane of soft, dark curls with the thickness of sheep wool. Against the elements this meager bit of hair was certainly not enough for the man—even in his sturdy brick shelters—and he wrapped himself in woven cloth and leathers to compensate. In the winter even this was not enough and he often spent his nights curled up tight and shivering in the corners of his buildings.

The human was certainly not the strongest of creatures. At least, not physically. Despite a similar shape to the minotaur he had none of their bulk, nor half their strength. He was outpaced by many of his fellow predators: the wolf, the mountain lion, the bear, and even their smaller cousins the cat and coyote. The slowest of ponies could outrun him barely going into a trot. His teeth were comically small and practically useless in combat.

From the ends of his arms stretched out thin paws that split into five long, tapering digits ending in blunt little pink claws. They were not unlike a dragon’s claws, though to directly compare the two would be a mistake. The paws had an elegant grace dragons never possessed, their fingers a nimbleness that raccoons only dreamt of and diamond dogs had only in brutish imitation.

Indeed, they were not true paws at all but something else entirely: hands. With them he was able to carry, lift, and create. By their power alone the human called forth fire to be his servant. For him it was a simple manipulation of wood and stone, or the sun and a bit of glass. A puff of air from his lung gave it life and grateful fires crackled tamely for him. Flames grew and shrank and gave off smoke according to only his hands and will.

No horn, no magic, no spells. None at all.

With a slight movement the delicate digits folded under to make a blunt attacking instrument: the fist. In the times just a fist did not suit him—often, for fists were still made of breakable bone—the human simply created something else that worked better.

Every object around him could be manipulated to serve his needs. Metal bent backwards into whatever shape he willed to help him pry open tight spaces or smash in a skull. Born with no claws, the human made his own. He took harmless bits of twigs and sharpened them into sharp spikes to impale flesh. Fiercer still, the human bent and sharpened his metals into blades sharp as griffon talons. Weapons in hand, he tore into the other animals fierce as any other predator, catching them by surprise in traps and throwing his sharp twigs into the air to make kills even when he was far away.

The river along the east side of his territory was where he often hunted, taking ducks on the bank, fish in the water, and squirrels in the trees. On his city’s edge he could sometimes catch rabbits or—if he was exceptionally lucky—a deer. These creatures he was the most fond of killing, not only because they had more meat than squirrels, but he could also peel the pelts from off their bones to create a sort of macabre pelt for himself. He did not prey on his fellow carnivore for whatever reason, although if he felt a hunger one day for coyote or falcon or tomcat there would be nothing stopping him.

More often he ate pigeons. A long time ago the hands of his mother and grandmother had taken a metal fence, warped and twisted it into a cage, then captured many pigeons to keep inside it. The human’s mother told him once that when she was small the birds were wild, pecking at hands and beating their wings uselessly against the cage. The man always found this hard to believe with the way pigeons waddled carelessly about the enclosure, happy as can be to alight on his shoulder and then defecate on it (they had a habit of defecating on everything and there was sadly no way to make them stop).

Every three days his pigeons were let out to fly all about the city and came back to him by the end of the day. When they had become fat enough the hands stopped petting their feathers and snapped their necks instead. Some days he felt a little sad about eating them. After all, they were his only companions.

His very favorites even had names, names he gathered from the ancient words that surrounded him: Park, Yield, Subway, Fines, Low-Bridge, Starbucks, and little One-Way, who had a charming white spot on her head. These seven the man resolved to never eat, even in the winter when food was scarce. He still had no problem devouring their brethren, however.

The human fancied sometimes that pigeons could understand his language. Some days as the sun went down he held them close, softly whispering to them. He wondered if they somehow remembered his mother, who raised them from eggs before she died of the winter coughs. He knew they probably didn’t, but he fancied the thought anyway.

 

* * *

 

One spring afternoon, new creatures came to the city.

Two of the little ponies that were nothing like the ancient ponies walked under the bridge spanning the river. The first was an earth pony that moved cautiously as she stepped along. The second, a unicorn, trotted merrily alongside her.

The man frowned, a little disappointed the hoof beats he heard weren't from a deer after all. Certainly he wasn't about to try hunting ponies. As a rule, eating things that spoke was a bad idea. But he still thought them interesting to watch.

They were smaller than the human had imagined them to be, with coats shockingly bright against their drab surroundings. The unicorn was the white of fresh sidewalks and road paints, and a silky blue tail with caution-yellow streaks streamed behind her. The earth pony friend’s green mane was cut short and sensible, and her coat was the warm terra-cotta color of newly made bricks.  

"I dislike the feel of this place," said the earth pony. "The soil in a human's city can soak in the unnatural elements around it in time. Bad place for making houses."

The unicorn laughed—a high, tinkling sound. "Humans! _Really?_  Humans? Why, my dear Topsoil, here I was thinking you so modern and rational. You old jokester, you." She started to laugh again, but it died when she noticed her companion frowning.

"I am just as rational as I have ever been, thank you. Furthermore, have you _ever_  known me to chaff, Light Heart?"

"Aww." Light Heart jostled Topsoil's shoulder, but the frown only deepened. " _Awww_ , come on. Don't be sore old girl, you know I don't mean anything by it. But truthfully, now. You've seen too many tapestries, dear."

"Hm. Maybe you haven't seen enough of them."

"The humans are all long gone by now. Vanished to the ages, if there was even such a fantastic creature to start with. These are just ruins like any other." Light Heart paused to examine some iron girders. "Aren’t they?"

The earth pony experimentally tapped on a rock. "Then why don't vines climb the walls? Or blades of grass burst out from small cracks in the stone? I can't feel the earth under my hooves at all. Not even a little. Only hardness. Why do many of the flowers only grow in boxes? Have you noticed there aren't any animals here?"

"Well, I did see a pigeon earlier. It was little and white, so cute!"

Topsoil raised an eyebrow. "And what else besides that? In all the other forgotten ruins ponies find otters in the streams, eagles nesting in the iron trees, and possums sleeping in the shade. There are some creatures here, yes, but most of them seem to be hiding. There are barely any fish in this river. What do you suppose they are hiding from?"

Light Heart had nothing to say to that.

"I tell you,” Topsoil continued, “there is at least one human left in the world and as long as it roams these roads we cannot make a home here. Ponies and humans should never live so close together. I know their ways, humans."

"Do you think…" The unicorn looked around and lowered her voice. "Do you think we might chase it out?"

"You know better than that. Even believing they never existed, you know better than that."

For a short time the ponies walked on in silence.  Then Topsoil said, "You know... my ancestor met a human once."

"Oh?"

"Great Great Grandmother Shady. She used to tell me about it when I was a filly. Spent quite a while with it, actually."

"Goodness me!" Light Heart gasped. "However did she get away?"

"Get away? Why, Grandmother couldn't get enough of the creature! Absolutely adored it."

"Did the human use a golden bridle to drain her willpower? Or weave a terrible net to catch her with? Oh my, was there torture involved?"

A little smile crossed Topsoil's face. "No," she said. "No bridles or nets or torture. The human used friendship. They would frolic in the valley, picking berries, singing silly songs, and watching over the foals."

"She let the human touch _foals_?"

"Oh, yes. Lots of times the human was the one who helped the little ones settle down for a nap. A couple of times it helped Grandmother Shady chase away mean, troublesome creatures that threatened the valley. I think it was her friend. At times there was a certain bitterness when she talked of the human, I remember. A fair number of her stories were about how it liked to spend time with other ponies instead of her. Then she'd grouse and complain about it for the rest of the day." Topsoil laughed deep and rich. "But then again, Grandma Shady complained about everything."

"Sounds nothing like any human I ever heard of."

"T'was a special breed, I think. It was smaller, with a longer mane it kept tied back with a bow the way ponies in those days tied them at the base of their tails. I think it was a sign of solidarity, maybe.” Topsoil hummed and flipped her tail in thought. “It was a breed called a… Morgana? A Marvel? Hmm. Oh! No, no, no, I remember: a Megan! My Great Great Grandmother Shady was friends with a Megan."

Light Heart burst into a grin. "Oh! Maybe the Megan breed lives here! Could it, Topsoil? It could, couldn't it? Maybe we could get it to help us build a house on this strange soil or maybe we could just live peacefully as neighbors. These ruins are so big, surely it wouldn't mind giving up a little room?"

"Hmm. I don't think so. Not many humans are Megans. They were always a rare breed, I think. And even if it was, we still couldn't live here. Even the Megan human Grandmother Shady knew always went back home at the end of the day. Shady slept in her own little house, and the Megan went to its own. We never live in the same place, I told you. Maybe travel together, or come 'round for a visit, but not live together. It simply is not done."

Light Heart sighed. "Alright. Alright, let's turn around. Look for somewhere else to live." Her face crumpled up miserably. "Oh, but Topsoil, there isn't anypony for miles and miles and miles of here. It was so perfect!"

The earth pony leaned into the unicorn for a nuzzle. "I know. I know, dearest. Don't worry. We will find another place."

The human peered further out of his hiding place by the wall to watch them go. When they were almost out of sight, the earth pony suddenly looked back.

In a high voice she called, “Stay where you are creature of contradictions! This is no world for you. Keep your walls strong and your city secure. Let us leave each other in peace, yes? And human! I beg you to take care, for you are the last.”

After a few moments assured the ponies would not be back, the man approached the spot where they’d been. A tuft of mane caught on a rivet fluttered in the wind. It was sky blue and very soft.

“I am the only human there is?”

They were the first words he’d spoken in nearly a year. The loudness of his own voice frightened him. Until the traveling ponies the man hadn’t realized how much he missed the sound of another voice, the sound of words and laughter and sighs.

The silence that followed was deafening.  

“But that just can’t be. How could there be none at all? A tiny number scattered here and there... a very very rare thing, certainly. But not gone entirely.”

After all, if the unicorn was wrong about humans living in the city, the hornless pony could have been wrong as well. Just because she hadn’t seen or heard of any didn’t mean there weren’t any.

“Yes,” he said finally. “She must have been mistaken.” He left resolving to forget the incident altogether.

For ten whole minutes he succeeded.

 

* * *

 

The human lived near the riverbank, in a stout little building that looked a bit silly compared to the majestic high-rises nearby. There was not a building in the entire city he loved more.

It was here he discovered that while hands were impressive all on their own, armed with knowledge they became marvels. This place taught his hands to weave baskets and hammocks and a hat for himself. He learned to craft fine bowls of clay and write poetry. (It was very bad, but still poetry.) The human had always climbed trees, but the this place taught him their names. It helped him let a sad old violin sing for the first time in decades. Voices of the dead told him of ancient kingdoms with bizarre names in a far off time where people could fly and ponies only said “neigh”. A time before the fire flowers blossomed across the sky and burned the flesh off everybody’s bones.

In those ancient times this place was called a library. The man simply called it home. 

But there were no voices of ancient eras that afternoon. Echoes from equines hung about him like a shroud. It was such an odd choice of words. They said the humans were “vanished” or “gone”. Not “killed”, not “extinct”, not “dead”. Gone.

And one did not simply go somewhere without ending up someplace else.

He spent the rest of the afternoon curled in a corner of wall and bookshelf, miserable with doubt and curiosity. For the first time in years there was something he didn’t know and that the library couldn’t tell him. When he was younger, before he found the library, if he needed to know something he would ask his mother. If _she_  needed to know something (though she already knew a great deal) she’d give a note to one of the pigeons and send away to someone beyond the city, then get a new note back. The human stood in search of spare paper and something to write with.

When Park and One-Way flew back to him, papers still freshly tied to their feet, the human remembered. The last time a bird flew a message was over fifteen summers ago. Subway, the oldest pigeon in the coop, was only thirteen. The human could always train them to send messages, but that would take time he suddenly couldn’t afford.

The only other way to find out was to see for himself. But that was a horrible idea. Or maybe it wasn’t. It was just a matter of asking somebody and coming right back, yes? No. No, it was foolish. The world was wide and full of dangers, and only fools went looking for danger. No, he belonged here in the city. Here with his pigeons and cracked sidewalks and garden and skyscrapers and graffiti and dead poets. If he didn’t take care of it, who would?

“I’ve been fine on my own, anyway.”

At the sound of his name Fines landed upon the man’s shoulder. Hands grasped the little white pigeon, held him out and asked, “Why do I even need to know what became of the others? I’m sure they’re all doing no better or worse than I am. And even if not, what business of it is mine? None. If other people needed my help they would seek me out, and they haven’t. So that’s that.”

Fines blinked his little pink eyes.

“So glad you agree.”

He let the bird go to join Park and One-Way in the aviary. The human watched the three of them peck at their pile of seeds.

“But...”

 _What if they need me?_  

“Suppose. Suppose they weren’t able to come find me? In danger and unable to leave?”

_What if they need me?_

One-Way hopped after a cricket and ate it with a snap. Fines jealousy glared at her from his perch. Crickets were much better than seed. The sun sank behind the spires and shining towers. They looked like a row of teeth from here.

The human wasn’t brave enough to say it out loud. A frightened whisper in the dark, hidden in a fog of flapping wings.

“What if they need me?”


	2. River Reeds

Some strips of dried meat, five apples, extra socks and shirts, two ropes, his knives, an extra pair of tough pants, fishing wire, needle and thread, a box of matches, two Twinkies, and his favorite book. All packed neatly into a sack. A _small_  sack.

This was not an expedition. This was not an adventure. This was a small outing. Leave, find something that spoke, ask around until assured humanity still existed (which it of course did). Then go straight home.

The human gathered his courage and walked. Morning shadows from a forgotten empire hid him from the sun as he traveled southward, following the tame river that flowed through the wide expanse of concrete. The human moved quickly, with only fleeting glances at passing scenery. He wasn’t sure he could get his legs moving again if they stopped.

Here was where he killed a den of coyotes without any remorse. Over there by the mailbox, the bench he sat on as he made a splint for an old injured grackle.

Several blocks farther, the gutted out mall he lived in before the library. A block after, the blackened remains of what once was a red pickup truck burned from the inside out.

The first tall tree he climbed and below that, the sidewalk where he broke his leg. The same sidewalk where warm, strong arms held him until he stopped crying. Where someone told him he must try to be brave even though his leg really hurt and it was scary.

Many, many dead streetlights near all of these. Some bent or fallen over from wind or age or neglect, but most still standing with a sort of mournful dignity. And then the one lamp that still lit and hummed when the sun went down.

An empty lot where shrubs and flowers grew around a humble gathering of stone markers jutting from the grass. Here was the only spot where the human took pause. He gathered bits of honeysuckle and pressed them carefully between the pages of his book. In return, he left sprays of flax flowers and pink carnations. Gently, he kissed the tip of his fingers and touched the edge of every stone.

And the man walked on.

The human followed the river until the pavement was broken more and more by dandelions and wild grasses. At last he came to a point where there was only the dirt, grass, and stray leaves under his boots. Only then the human looked behind him. There was a faint blob of greys and browns in the distance. A tower’s silhouette stabbed at the clouds. He took a breath and filled it with the taste of iron, asphalt, brick, and mortar.

The human ignored the tightness in his heart and went forward.    

 

 

* * *

 

Through the hours, days, and weeks the human rose before the sun and traveled until it was too dark to clearly see or his feet ached too much for another step. Whichever came first. The river ran beside him and the farther it ran away from the iron city, the wilder it became. At home it flowed so tame and still that it hardly moved. Now the water burbled and laughed constantly, and the human had to be careful the laundry wasn’t swept away.

And the sky! He could hardly believe it was the same sky from the city. Out here it wasn’t cut into little sections by tall buildings. The sheet of blue just went on and on. The human kept close to the trees whenever he could to hide his smallness from it.

The food ran out quickly and the human was glad he decided to follow the river where there was no shortage of supplies. The creatures that came for water had no fear of him and fell easily under his knives. Almost too easily. Most of them ran hardly a foot before they were caught—why, a hare practically climbed into his lap once. It almost felt… unfair sometimes. Of course, his lovely new deerskin cloak and the warm juices of hare meat kept it from seeming _that_  unfair.

Such plenty kept his steps spritely and heart light, despite the fact he traveled for miles and found little information of other humans. The ponies that visited his city were right—nobody around for ages.

The man saw an old yellow unicorn once but she was no help at all. They discovered each other after he woke up from a nap and she nearly tripped over his legs. He asked several times about his people, but the old thing was deaf to his questions.

She’d just peered at him strangely, musing to herself about “how cold the little hairless yeti must be.” The unicorn was likely senile too, for when he moved away she followed him down the riverbank with a blanket and some vines. She kept calling out bizarre things. Things like “Here, now. Here, boy!” and “Poor little dear” and “I won’t hurt you, my chuck,” over and over. How absurd—as if the frail mare could ever hurt _him_!  The human had to run ahead a bit and hide in a tree before the unicorn gave up and went away.

“What a silly pony,” he mused to himself later, “To not know a man when she looks right at one. Ha, who knows? Perhaps there are thousands of people walking the earth and it's only the foolish ponies who ever run into them.”

One morning after a fresh breakfast of trout and blackberries the human found himself in an exceptionally bright mood. He was splayed out in the grass letting the sun soak in his bones, with his pants rolled up high and long legs dangling in the river. It put him in the mind of his city in the summer when it was warm enough to swim, yet cool enough to walk upon the pavement without burning his bare feet. For once the thought of home cheered him, and waving his feet in the water the human sung to himself:

 

“ _Don't sit under the apple tree_

_With anyone else but me_

_Anyone else but me, anyone else but me_

_No, no, no_

_Don't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me_

_Till I come marching home._

_Don’t_... Hm.”

 

How did the next part to that song go? It had been so long since the last time he sang it and the human didn’t bring a book of lyrics. Suddenly, as if too impatient to wait for him to catch up, the song continued without him:

“ _Don’t go walking down lovers’ lane_

_With anyone else but me_

_Anyone else but me_ ”

 

The voice rang out from the river, clear and beautiful as crystal bells. The human, suddenly very embarrassed about his own singing voice, timidly sang back. “ _Anyone else but me_?”

“ _Anyone else but me_!” the voice cried.

The human looked around but found nobody there.  

“ _No, no no, don’t go walking down lovers’ lane_ ”

The human looked up into the trees and across the river. Nobody there.

“ _Till I come marching home_!”

The human looked down. A pony in the water looked back with eyes too big for her head. “Hello!” she giggled, “Is it me you’re looking for?”

No. No, not exactly a pony. She (presuming it was a she) certainly had the head of a pony, but her body was long and curvy, ending in a little tail that curled around a rock to keep from drifting away. There were fins instead of hooves, and her garishly pink pelt was smooth and shiny as a fish or an eel. It was iridescent when the sun hit her at certain angles, like oil puddles after rainfall.

“Like a seahorse,” the human mused to himself. “Or... maybe a sea _pony_?”

The creature waved its little fins at him delightedly. “ _Shoo-be-doo_! _Shoo-shoo-be-doo_!”

Seaponies know songs the way a pegasus knows clouds. In them is every lyric, every melody, every song, whistle, and hum that ever was or will be, for they are old as the tides. Outliving even the dragons by a fair millennium, seaponies have the time to rehearse them all perfectly. Songs are the only things they know, however, and they can only hold so much music at once. Words are shared between them like pollen among flowers, usually approaching land creatures in a chorus of three, five, or twelve to sing a conversation. A seapony alone struggles to keep all the songs straight, one colliding with the other. A tangible conversation with a lone seapony is nothing short of miraculous.

The human yearned for straight and simple answers and knew none of this.

Reader, pity him.

“But wouldn’t a seapony belong in the sea?” he wondered. “You’re a bit far from the sea, aren’t you?”

“I’m a deep water sailor just come from Hong Kong, you give some whiskey, I’ll sing you a song.  Sometimes I sleep. Sometimes it’s not for days. Drop the anchor, lift my heart.” The seapony flourished a dramatic fin. “I will be there and everywhere, here there and everywhere but my life, my love, and my lady is the sea.”

“You must have traveled far.”

“I am a traveler of both time and space. Keep a little birdhouse in your soul,” she said. The seapony rested her head upon the shore, tangles of sea green mane clinging to her face. For a time she watched the man’s legs floating in the water humming shoo-be-doos to herself.

Then she peered at him curiously. “Are you going to Scarborough Faire?”

“Err, pardon?”

“If you’re going to San Francisco,” she informed him, “Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. They tell me a fault line runs right through here. Atlantis will rise, Sunset Boulevard will fall. Better start swimmin’ or you you’ll sink like a stone!”  The seapony grinned little sharp teeth, “Where the beach use to be, won’t be nothin’ at all.”

The human wasn’t sure what most of that was supposed to mean, but mention of ancient San Francisco lit a candle in his heart. “Do you think you can help me? I am looking for somebody.”

“Don’t you want somebody to love? Love does exactly what it wants to do!”

“Um. No, not exactly. I’m looking for someone that looks like me.” Suddenly he thought of the strange old mare who chased him with the vines. A knot tied in his stomach. “Can you even tell what I am?”

“I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together”, the pink pony told him. When the human wilted, she pressed against him and soothed, “I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream. You could hide beside me, maybe for a while? And I won’t tell no one your name.”

“Really. Then what is it, then? What am I?”

“Andy, you’re a star! You are my shining star, you are my only sunshine.” The seapony tugged on his leg and gestured to the river. “Black hole sun, won’t you come? If the sun don’t come you get a tan from standing in the English rain.”

 Against the assault of good cheer and the sun still pleasant on his shoulders the human’s melancholy slipped away. He laughed, though he knew there wasn’t much to laugh at.

Satisfied, the seapony came back to the surface and smiled at him. The human reached out a hand to offer her some of the blackberries leftover from breakfast, but the pony made a face at them. Then she sneezed a little jet of bubbles.

“You’re sort of a silly little pony,” the human told her. “You certainly mean well, even if not much help. Thank you for trying, but I need to move on. If even you don’t know me then I may have farther to go than I imagined, and the morning is already over. Farewell, little seapony.”  He brought his legs out of the water and reached for his socks and boots.

In the river the seapony tilted her head and frowned.  She bobbed in the water absently humming, “He’s got the whole world in his hands, he’s got the whole world in his hands...”

And then the pony recited smooth and empty of melody: “Human. _Humanus._ Homo Sapien. Order: Primate. Family: Most likely dead. Class: Synapsida. Phylum: Chordata. Otherwise known as the ‘contradiction creature’, due to its unpredictable and often senseless nature. Commonly mistaken for a hairless ape. A vain animal that may compose symphonies inspired by alley cats, but cannot imagine the world going on without them. The augmentation of the earth and adorner of ships. How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? He is wise enough to win the world but fool enough to lose it. Man has cried a billion tears for what he never knew, now man’s reign is through. Duck and cover, the future’s so bright I gotta wear shades! _Shoo-be-doo_! _Shoo-shoo-be-doo_!”

The human stared in shock.

After a moment the seapony gently added, “It is also _very_  bad at singing.”

For some time the man could only sit there, frozen in time with his hand still in the air holding a sock.

The seapony smugly puffed out her little chest. Then she twisted about to watch a frog hopping along in the grass. “Jerimiah was a bullfrog,” she told the human helpfully.

A hand grasped her chin to keep her focus. “Please. Please, miss, all I want to know is if you’ve seen other people like me. I don’t care what kind, any sort would satisfy me. Just even one you’ve seen sitting by another river or boating upon the sea or living underground? Somewhere. Anywhere! Please, just tell me you’ve seen one and I swear I will believe you and go home and never bother you again.”

"Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling..." The seapony sniffed at the smell of dead trout on his fingers. “Her mind is Tiffany twisted,” she apologized. "Somewhere a queen is weeping. Somewhere a king has no wife. Out there there's a world outside of Yonkers, way out there beyond this hick town, Barnaby."

The human began to move away, but two little fins grasped his wrist and refused to release him. She was surprisingly strong.

"There's a slick town, Barnaby! Out there, full of shine and full of sparkles. Close your eyes and see it glisten, Barnaby."  The creature snorted a little jet of bubbles. "Listen, Barnaby! Agh! People hearing without listening. Nowhere man _please_  listen! You don't know what you're missing!"

She squeezed her eyes shut in concentration and shook her head as if trying to get something out of her mane.

"Listen. The White Roc soared o'er the sky with all the human beings, all of them, clutched close against its feathered breast."

The human knelt down on the bank to meet the seapony's wide, lavender eyes. "I am listening but I don't understand. Even in these wild lands, surely rocks cannot fly. Can they?"

After a moment he added, "And my name is not Barnaby."

There was a beat of silence as the seapony floated there with her eyes clamped shut. Then in a voice eerily clear and devoid of laughter she recited, "For all the world like an eagle, but one indeed of an enormous size. Cloudy quills twelve paces long and thick in proportion. Bright eyes burning like fire. And oh, it's so strong to seize a man—one and one and one is three—into its claws. And in the naked light I saw ten thousand people, maybe more. There's a place where the light won't find you, holding hands while the walls come tumbling down. Ah, look at all the lonely people! I hear her singing in sighing of the wind blowing in the treetops. All the lonely people, where do they all belong?"

"Little one, where are the others? Where did they go?"

"Hide it in the hiding place where no one ever goes," she said gravely. "Put it in your pantry with your cupcakes."

“I still don’t understand.”

But the focus in her voice had already unraveled back into songs, disconnected and full of wonder. “Suddenly the sun broke through. I looked around, she was gone. Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?”

The human suddenly noticed that not only had the seapony’s focus unraveled, but so had her grip upon the rock. She swept away with the current like a butterfly in a high wind, a blur of pink in the distance. Over the water, or perhaps under it, the bell voice called, “Sing a song of fire, lest you fall into the dark!”

Then only sounds of water rushing over rocks and a mockingbird scolding from a tree branch.

“She seemed to know what I was,” the human said to himself. “That’s something at least.” Then again, the seapony could have just been reciting another song she heard somewhere. It could have meant absolutely nothing. “And what was all that about a roc?”

The sun had already dried his wet legs. It was too hot for a cloak and blossoms in the trees had been replaced with unripe fruit. “Summer must be here. Summer already.”

He’d been gone far too long. The human hoped his pigeons were still doing alright. Poor Fines must miss him terribly.

The seapony’s talk wasn’t much to go on but it was better than nothing. The human gathered his things together and went at a brisk pace, leaving behind the leftover berries to shrivel in the sun.

The man only went half a mile before stopping again. It was barely mid-afternoon but it somehow felt as if he’d walked for days. The pack became unbearably heavy and his cloak kept getting in his way. And he could hardly see... had the sun always been this bright?

The human settled down among the reeds, using the pack as a makeshift pillow. The reeds looked healthy and sturdy. He could weave a hat for himself to get the sun out of his eyes and put the time cut from today’s journey to good use.

The brim was only half done when the human’s eyelids became too heavy to lift. He curled his cloak about him and drifted to sleep, strands of reeds still clutched tightly in his hands.

 

* * *

 

 

The wheels groaned and a great clatter erupted in the night as the wagons crashed against each other from the sudden stop. A cluster of plovers scattered to the air just before the pony crashed through their nest and a dormouse just barely missed getting trampled underhoof.

In the moonlight a unicorn’s silhouette cut through reeds until it reached a brown lump. He ran an anxious little half-circle around it once, twice, then took a step forward and sniffed. It was an interesting scent: hints of stag, mud, fishes, honeysuckle and something… else. In a glow of silvery white the brown cloth lifted away to reveal the sleeping creature inside.

“Well.” The copper unicorn’s grin reached for his ears. “Well, _well_. By the moon above, would you look at that?”

An ear swiveled at the sounds of wheezing, hoofbeats, and an annoying jingle bell. The unicorn glanced to the approaching a donkey and another younger unicorn close behind. “About time you louts caught up.”  

“And just what—” the donkey broke into a fit of coughs. “Wh-what’s so important you have to near choke us to death, eh? Pullin’ so hard like that’s dangerous, we could ‘ave died draggin’ yer fool hide! Least ye can do is warn—”

“Hush!” the unicorn hissed. “I can’t tell how long ago it found the nightberries. We might not have much time before it stirs.”

The donkey looked at the figure in the reeds and grimaced. “What can ye even do with a sick, starvin’ ‘squatch anyhow? ‘Twill just die afore the month is out. ‘Prolly give us whatever it has and take all our fur along with it.”

“You’re an idiot. Not that I’m surprised.” The elder unicorn turned to the younger, who was peering over the donkey’s shoulder. “And what of you, soothsayer? Do you recognize this animal from your _wanderings_ through the fabric of time?” The copper stallion smirked and the donkey chuckled nastily in the back of his throat.

But the unicorn stayed quiet, eyes transfixed at the sleeping creature and his ears pricked stiff. He had not even blinked.

The elder’s hoof just missed striking his nose. “Answer when you’re spoken to, jangling whelp!”

The younger pony blinked rapidly, as if to make up for all the blinks he missed earlier. “I-I don’t see anything worth taking. Just a furless ape is all. I... um. I saw a colony of attercop not far back, perhaps we could use those instead?”

“No. No, I want this one. Disassemble the thorn cage and bring it here. I’m not going to risk moving it, just rebuild the cage around it right here.”  

The donkey rolled his eyes, “So cast a sleeper and move it yerself. _I’m_  not looking for a cut up mouth.”

“A spell to hold that one has not yet been crafted. Perhaps never will be. Just have to do our best with our hooves and teeth.” The unicorn thought a moment. “Hm. Fetch some rope from the wagons too, while you’re at it. No, on second thought, make that chains. Better safe than sorry. The one who wakes it up gets an eye full of thorns instead of a mouthful.”

A medley of jingling metal and rustling grass mixed with the crickets’ night chorus. In the dark, a horn’s cold light shone like a star by the river. Then, as soon as it began, the sounds fell silent and there was a groan of protesting wheels and creaking wood. The light vanished.

The wind sighed in the reeds in counterpoint for the chorus of crickets. The family of plovers landed to work on rebuilding a destroyed nest, the only evidence anyone had been there at all.


	3. Brass Bells & Black Thorns

He awoke in pain. His skin was stretched too tight and tried to smother his poor bones. His veins wouldn’t stop pulsating. It was too hot for his cloak. No, this wasn't a cloak. This was heavier and clung closer to him... maybe a tunic? Too hot for a tunic, then. Why was he wearing something so hot? Summertime wasn't the time for bearskins... wait, when did he ever kill a bear?

The human tried getting rid of it to let his claustrophobic skin get some air, but to his horror discovered his arms were dead.

A traveling stranger passed through his city once, back when he was shorter than most windowsills.  The man was nice and told him stories but the next morning the stranger said something about not feeling his left arm. Then he fell, dead as a power line.

Was this what it was? Was he dying? Was that why his feet couldn’t move either? Was that why his head throbbed and his tongue felt too big for his mouth?  

Oh. No, wait, there they were.

He could feel his feet and arms after all, they just couldn't move much. The fingers and toes still wiggled, they must be alright too. Perhaps he was not dying after all. Good to know.

The human squeezed his eyes shut and waited for his breath to stop being jagged and rapid and hard to hold. But even when the air in his lungs moved smoothly his head still throbbed, it was still too hot, and the light hurt his eyes. He supposed he should be grateful it was only from a candle and not the merciless glare of the sun, but even so—wait. Candles? And where was that annoying clinking sound coming from?

It was then the man realized he was no longer lying upon the soft grasses, nor did it feel like silt, mud, or even simple compact dirt. This felt… solid. It felt like a floor but he couldn’t have been indoors, for there was a breeze that carried along the scent of trees. There was a low rumble of voices in the distance, and something walking in the grass. Curiosity overpowered the headache and he opened his eyes in full. There wasn’t much to see, just grey floorboard.

Whatever kept his arms pulled back also kept him from standing, so he tried rolling over only to have a thousand evil sharp little somethings claw deep into his shoulder. Even through the bear hide he could feel them biting into his skin, into muscle and bone. He couldn’t see, but he was sure he must be bleeding. He rolled over in the other direction, gritting his teeth down to the root to keep from crying out.

The human chewed his lip and looked up carefully. There were rows on rows of spiteful black thorns winking in the candlelight, shiny with his blood. His eye followed the thorns up and up as they arched above and around him in a wide spherical cage. It put him in the mind of some ugly parody of Cinderella’s carriage. A lovely red rose blossomed on several vines for a touch of elegant irony.

The cage looked almost tall enough to stand in, but not quite. The man doubted it mattered, now that he saw the reason why he was barely able to move. His ankles were in fetters and lengths of silver chain held his arms tight against his back, threatening to pop his injured shoulder. A larger, fatter chain circled around his neck, rooted to the floor. It looked long enough to get around the enclosure, but he was sure if he somehow managed to stand up straight he’d be strangled.

“I’d keep away from the bars if I were you.”

A unicorn crouched at eye level just beyond the thorns. He was the cornflower blue of a midday sky, and the shades of pink in his frazzled mane resembled the quiet dawn. The pony seemed broader than the mares the human had seen earlier, with a stouter muzzle and looking altogether less delicate, despite the gangly legs. The horn was unusually long and almost too big for his head, not unlike a pup that hadn’t grown into its ears and paws. The unicorn gazed at him with dark and solemn eyes, but the little pink beard fluffing out of his chin made it hard to take them seriously. A thin black cape draped over his shoulders did its best to seem mysterious but the brass bell cheerfully jingling at the clasp diluted the effect.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That advice is a little late, isn’t it? I’d have warned you earlier of the cage but I thought you were still asleep. You’ve been out all day and I was starting to worry. I don’t know how many of those berries you ate, but for your size, I expect it was too many.”

The human just frowned and blinked slowly at him. “Where am I? Are you the one that put me in here?”

“We are in show business, my friend. Pyrite the Bold’s Carnival of Carnivores. Otherwise known as Pyrite the Fearless’ Fantastic Festival of Fangs, or Pyrite’s Terrible Tent of Terrors, or Pyrite’s Magnificent Medley of Marvelous Monsters, or whatever else title the crowbait cob’s been using lately.” He averted his eyes and continued, “And yes, I helped detain you. I hope you can forgive me for that, but it was no idea of mine. I tried my best to coax him into getting something different, I really did, but he’d have none of it.”

The human looked to the small array of wagons where he heard the voices before and could vaguely see two figures in the window of the largest one.

“Who? The long eared fellow?”

“Cozen? No, he wants nothing to do with you. He argued more against your capture than I did, though for more foolish reasons. Showmaster Pyrite’s the one you want, the fellow in the jerkin and the feathered cap. You’ll get more love from a boiled cabbage heart than from his.”

The human was just barely listening. With no small effort he'd managed to sit up for a better look around. The world beyond the thorns was all flat land dressed in tawny grasses and a lavender sky bleeding into early evening. The company of wagons sat out in the open, out of place and lonely as if someone had left their belongings behind with no intention to return. The largest wagon, sun-faded and creaking, lurked a fair distance away from it all, too proud to mingle with the rest of the collection.

The structure closest to the faded wagon was a circular platform on tall metal wheels directly across from the thorn cage. A she-wolf with dull sable fur curled in a tight ball in the middle of it, the gentle rise and fall of furry sides the only sign the only sign of life in her. Similar platforms were lined out in a wide semi-circle. Next to the wolf’s area a weasel chased its tail, and after that, a blindfolded rooster neighboring with what the human would later know as a diamond dog. After them was a winged tawny animal several times bigger than the wolf, unidentifiable with its back turned, grumbling low to itself every now and then. Next to the human’s own cage was a large platform where a cluster of swallowtails fluttered in the air, all of them a dark iridescent green, and he wondered why they didn’t fly away instead of circling around themselves in a lazy whirlwind.

The human had the only area with actual bars, but something in the depths of his liver told the man the other creatures were no less caged. He looked at how closely the thorn vines wove around each other, hardly room for a shrew to squeeze in without a nasty scratch. He remembered a nameless pigeon cooing, a little heartbeat hammering against his palm before he gripped tighter and the heartbeat stopped. He knew what happened to creatures in a cage.

Despite the heat from the bearskin, the human shivered. “I don’t like this place.”

“No sane creature does,” sighed the blue unicorn. He glanced up at the human and smiled gently. “Take heart and don’t be afraid. You’ll be free soon.”

“Oh, I’m not afraid.” The man’s voice shivered like daisies in a frosty wind.  

“I’ll speak with Cozen and see to it those chains are loosed some. No point in showing off a human without some devilry of hands, is there?” The pony lowered his voice to a whisper. “What was in the bag you had?”

“Um, food and clothes, mostly. A few tools and things. Why?”

“Have you something to pick a lock? Do you know how?”

The human nodded.

“Good, that—” the unicorn froze at the sound of a closing door and tried to make himself smaller in the tall grass brushing against his chest. “I’ve not much time. Check your supper carefully before you eat it. I will be back later, just stay there in the meantime.”

The human glanced at the thorns and lifted an eyebrow.

“Oh, you know what I mean. Just don’t do anything to tip the trough, sit there quietly and do... human things. And try and get some sleep, the show starts in two hours.”

“I’ve been sleeping for over a day.”

“Then fake it. They won’t adjust your bonds if you’re awake.” The unicorn looked up and around before ducking close to the earth like a prairie dog, tightening his haunches for a sprint. “Be still until you hear from me.”

"Who is it I'm waiting for?"

He waited a moment before simply saying, “Star Swirl”. Then he rushed away, a little black cloud billowing and jingling across a yellow field. The human watched until it vanished behind the wagons before he lay down again.

 

He didn’t sleep, of course. Not with the extra sleep from the past day and certainly not with the frets and worries biting at his brain. Instead the human simply closed his eyes, listened to the breeze cut through the waving grass, keeping himself at ease thinking of the closed safety of brick walls. He drilled through memories of many doors, windows, drawers, gates, boxes and all other things that bore lock or latch, and he assured himself that he still knew how to coax or force all of them open. He concentrated on the feel of chilled silver and reminded himself he knew how to free himself with the right tools.

The human did not move at the sound of several sets of hooves moving about the cage. He was still at the sound of something twisting, falling and was still when he knew that the cage was open temptingly, achingly wide. He listened quietly to the voices argue logistics of how much slack the chain ought to have and still be practical, though one voice seemed more concerned about some sort of skin contact.

But when he felt his arms moving by themselves, he could not help but risk a peek.

Immediately he regretted it.

It wasn’t as if the human was ignorant of magic. He’d heard lots of stories and read many books and seen several pictures that depicted magics of various sorts. He knew very well that there was magic in the world beyond his iron towers and asphalt rivers. This knowledge did nothing to prepare him for the sight of his hands—his very own hands—floating in midair above him, the manacles and chain holding his wrists glowing a bright unearthly glow. There was no reason a chain ought to glow. There ought to be no way his limbs should move against his will. A sudden frost crept along the thin hairs of the base of his neck and there was a hitch in his throat.

The human made a very quiet mewl in the back of his throat and squeezed his eyes shut. He scarcely dared to breathe as he felt his arms move independently to and fro, hearing someone huff and strain the whole time. When his arms were gently dropped back to the floorboards, heard the twisty creaks of the cage closing up and the sound of hooves fading away, the human sat up and let himself exhale.  

The human’s wrists were now bound in front of him and he could stretch them to shoulder length but no further. He shuddered and pulled all his limbs in close for a self-embrace until he was reassured that that his body belonged to himself again.

It was then he noticed something new in the enclosure: a little pile of stones, twigs, and grasses awkwardly held a hen impaled on a stick. Not a bad setup for a fire, considering it had been made by ponies (though the human thought if they went through the trouble of making a spit they could have at least bothered to pluck the hen). In the stony pile something caught the light and stuck out at an odd angle, a long thin bit of iron that was slightly hooked at the end.

He snatched the lockpick and gripped it so tightly it made an impression in his palm. It didn’t have the clever finesse of the picks from home, not specially made for breaking into fallout shelters or lock-boxes, but from the look of these locks he suspected that it would do just fine. The silver fetter locks were somewhat different than what he was used to. Not very complicated, though it could take some time to figure out and the human suspected there wasn’t much time to borrow.  

The man’s thoughts were interrupted by the gurgling growl of his stomach. He looked to the hen and frowned. The blue unicorn (Star Swirl, wasn’t it?) was intent that any escape attempts should wait until later. First things first, then. He carefully hid the lockpick in the folds of the bearskin, resting it securely against his chest, then went to work plucking the hen.

Something in the air had changed. It was less of terror and more of anticipation. The human wondered why... and then he saw them. An assembly of ponies—all unicorns, it seemed—had gathered in the field not far from the semicircle of cages. They huddled together, a pastel rainbow of a crowd murmuring amongst themselves. A few stood to the side, where they spoke to Star Swirl, his shock of pink mane plainly visible even from a distance. He was hunched over a table concentrating on flipping a set of cards, pausing every now and again to consult some sort of map or chart, then exchanged words with the little crowd at his table.

He went back to the hen. Now fully plucked, the man saw that it really didn’t have much in muscle tone or fat; very disappointing for a bird this size. It still would do for a small supper though, he’d eaten far worse before and besides it wasn’t as if he was in any position to pick and choose. Now, if only the flint would cooperate. It took several tries to even get a spark, and at least ten attempts to make those sparks bloom into a healthy flame. It was during the seventh of these attempts the human heard a voice.

 

The donkey stood amongst the unicorn crowd calling out into the field, a sound dry, coarse and crackling. An antagonistic drought wind, eager to whip a thirsty field into a frenzied brush fire. “Move in, move in. Move in an’ keep well to guard yer faint hearts an’ sensibilities. The sun leaves an’ the moon’s not yet show ‘erhelf. You an’ I, we’re in the in-between time now. Tis the hour when creatures of blood an’ fangs stir in the shadows. The nightmares are a-wakin’. Fillies and gentlecolts, welcome to Showmaster Pyrite’s Carnival of Carnivores." The donkey bowed his head, lowering his long ears as a noblecolt might remove his hat. “I am Cozen, yer guide for th’ evenin’.”

The human glanced up from the fire for a look around. It seemed a poor exhibit of nightmares in his opinion, save for perhaps the hulking animal with the leather wings a few cages away. But perhaps the little herbivorous ponies were just easier to spook. As Cozen’s dry voice droned on the man went back to more important matters. The little flames licked the hen, but stubbornly refused to become a proper fire. The warmth from the embers were likely enough to cook a tiny hen, if just barely, assuming he gave it enough air and turned the bird properly.  

But in the distance there was something odd about Cozen’s speech. Something stranger than a simple exaggeration, something that seemed to conjure nightmares from newts. “Here is th’ timberwolf. Often ‘eard in the depths of forests in the east singin’ creaky wooden howls deep in the dark. They don’t stick to any one area in particular, usually movin’ from area to area in packs of fiveish or so. This one, she came upon us one moonless spring night with ‘er eyes glowin’ bright on us, just as they glow on you folks right now. She’s all branches, twig, an’ leaf. As much tree as wolf, pro’lly more. A real creature of the wood, this one.”

The human frowned in confusion and stretched his neck to see through the crowd. For a moment he thought that he’d not seen that particular cage correctly. But no, it was just the same she-wolf from before standing in the cage. She blinked slowly and coughed a wet phlegmy cough. Certainly she was a fearsome animal (or would be had she been healthier) but nothing at all like what the donkey was describing.

“It will run a pony to exhaustion. Ye won’t see ‘er comin—blendin’ in as she does with the trees an’ such—until you feel fangs lodged in yer leg. She’ll let ye go after she bites ye, she knows ye’ll not be gettin’ far. Them wooden fangs’ll drive deep an’ set splinters in the bone. She don’t ‘ave to chase very hard, ye’ll run yerself ragged before too long. Ev’ry step is agony, ev’ry step drives all them little splinters in deeper and ye’ll get slower an’ slower until the timberwolf an’ her friends don’t got to do more than walk up calm as you please. ’Tis not unusual for the wolf to eat its prey alive.”

The crowd huddled tighter, bubbling with nervous murmurs. One mare jumped back screaming when the sable wolf sat on her haunches and yawned with a mouth of ordinary yellow teeth. Were they all blind?

Cozen smiled with tombstone teeth. “I s’pose it could be said the timberwolf’s _bark_  is worse than ‘er bite.”  

A few ponies giggled nervously at the joke. Very few. The crowd moved on to the weasel, still dashing about in mad little circles. Every now and then it stopped to fruitlessly dig at the floor.  

“The snow wasset,” said the donkey “can be found in the northern mountains huntin’ little creatures of various sorts. This one in particular’s a runt—only twice the length of a stallion like _you_ , sir, don’t touch the cage—but they’re usually twice this size at least. As you can see, he’s green now. Ordinarily, he’d be dozin’ the summertime away in a cranberry swamp somewhere waitin’ on winter. Ye see, when the air gets chilled an’ the snows fall the wasset sheds its legs just as a serpent sheds skin and he dives deep in the snow banks and vanishes, for by that time he’ll ‘ave a coat just as white. There he’ll wait until he ‘ears the pit-pat of little paws and SNAP! Breeches up like a shark, great maw open t’snap up any unsuspectin’ soul.”

An orange filly with a messy green mane waved her hoof about. “Does it eat ponies?” she asked in a loud voice.

Cozen cast her an annoyed glance and waved a lazy hoof. “It usually prefers things that’ll fit whole in ‘is mouth. Lil' rabbits an’ such. Wolverines are their favorite. But, yes. More than one unfortunate pony’s been dragged under the snow by the likes of this one when it runs out of wolverines. Pyrite discovered this ‘un layin’ on the rocks, red-muzzled with a stomach swole to boulder size. All about him was the remains of some unlucky party of earth pony travelers. Naught but a pile of hooves an’ scarves.”

The weasel reached it sinewy body around to gnaw a flea on its haunch. It was hardly big enough to be a scarf itself. Not even a good pair of mittens.

“‘Course the good news is a fat snow wasset’s a slow snow wasset. If not for them earth ponies Pyrite might never ‘ave caught it and you fine folks would've lost a grand opportunity to see him for yerselves. Always a use for an earther, eh?”

This time more than a few laughed at the joke and Cozen smiled.

An ember popped and the human suddenly remembered his fire. He huffed and puffed and blew it, teasing the grasses to persuade the flames to live just a little longer. Too much time wasted wondering about ponies and too little on important things. He carefully felt the sides of the hen; it wouldn’t be long now, but it was cooking a little uneven. The man adjusted the spit carefully, paying attention to his own matters, but still listening to the donkey’s brushfire voice.

“The cockatrice. Body of a serpent, head of a chicken, but all of him foul. With but a cold stare he petrifies, so for your safety an’ mine he wears a blindfold over them bewitchin’ eyes. Good news for us, but it’s no comfort to his little friend, that’s for sure.”

Cozen paused to clear his throat. “Kin of the mountain, Crunch the Rockdog and he's a rarity bein’ only Rockdog that ever was. Like ‘is evil little feathered fiend of a friend he’s a petrifying beast, though for our good fortune tis by touch an not sight. Look fer yerself, the very floor he stands on is granite from the touch of them paws. Dragons turn to statues, forests become barren wastelands. He hates softness, both in texture and in character. The sight of fluff or the scent of love drives him into a rampage, barrelin’ all over up an’ down the place turnin’ everything he spies to granite. Mayhap he’s only jealous. No heart of his own, ye see. Th’ ol’ mountain what sired Crunch made a heart fer him—a fire ruby—and once upon a time it rested right there in the collar ‘anging from his neck.”

The man looked up a moment, making sure to keep the spit turning. A rooster sat looking a little silly with a spotted blindfold around its head.  A young doggish creature with an ape-like build and skin like an elephant sat next to it. He blinked at the unicorns with eyes bright and green as a traffic light, lacking anything even close to hatred in them. A little blue tongue lolled out in the night air. It moved its mouth at the crowd, but no sound came out.

“Crunch and the cockatrice: brothers of boulder, pals in petrification.” Cozen seemed to take more time to stretch out the Rockdog’s speech. When he led the crowd to the fifth animal his long ears stretched flat out behind his head. The nervous air was contagious, moving along the unicorns in waves of wide darting eyes, rapid hearts, and frightened nickers.

“The manticore.” The donkey’s voice wavered, a flame petering out under a cold breeze. “It prowls the dark woodland of the Unicorn Kingdom, stalks the laborious villages of the Earth Pony Nation, and has even been known to feast in lower clouds of the Pegasus Hegemony in search of prey.”

“The... the clouds?” asked a mare. “How?”

“Well, just see fer yerself, mum! Take a look at them strong dragonish wings. Not strong enough to get that bulk any long distance but perfect for a surprise assault on low fliers. He can jump the whole length of this carnival here, can propel himself with his wings even farther. No trouble for that paw to throw a pegasus down.” Cozen shuddered. “No trouble at all. It likes the ground better, though. Less effort. Claws are longer than your horn and impossible sharp. Behold the tail, long as the manticore’s whole body and if the fangs or claws don’ end you that tail will. Trust old Cozen, between the claws an’ tail you’ll be wantin’ the claws.”

The human glanced up, half expecting to see a shabby catamount with thinning fur, one tooth, and an ear infection.  But to his amazement, every word the donkey spoke was true. Undoubtedly, absolutely, horribly true. A lion of incredible size crouched before the donkey and his unicorn herd, lashing a long, deadly scorpion tail, the spur on the end like a dollop of blood dripping in the air. The leathery wings snapped pointlessly in the air and the human could feel the rumbles from the manticore’s throat soak through skin and into the marrow of his bones. For a short moment he was a little grateful of the thorn cage.  

In a golden blur the creature threw itself at the frightened crowd, only to ricochet against the air and was thrown back in a thundering crash. He stood a moment later with nothing to show for the effort but a squashed nose and rumpled whiskers sticking out of his face. The area around the manticore took on a dull silvery sheen, a glistening soap bubble with the familiar silver-white aura the man saw before on the chains. A barrier. The other predators must have had similar bubbles around them as well, invisible until reality bumped against it. In the cage next door the butterflies fluttering in midair, pressed against the sky but unable to fly away. The human watched them and blinked in wonder. Yet, his own cage wasn’t invisible at all but painfully, physically real. He wondered why.

The audience shrieked and cowered as the manticore snarled and clawed at the air. Great golden eyes held the crowd captive. The crowd took a collective step back. But Cozen calmly stood where he was and said, “Calm down folks, that barrier’s held against meaner creatures than him. But if that’s not enough t’calm yer soul, then look! Look above us.”

They looked. There, atop the roof of the tallest wagon, stood the taut figure of a unicorn with all the softness of a spur angled downward and looming like a gargoyle.  From a distance he was difficult to make out, excepting for the brilliant copper of his coat, the feathered cap tilted on the side of his head and the black eye patch that seemed to consume half his face.  The array of lanterns surrounding him threw a shadow across the audience, the donkey, and the great menagerie of predators.  A single green eye stared down and deep at all of them.

“Pyrite the Bold, our Showmaster. The breaker of beasts when nopony dares,” Cozen said.  “So long as he is with us we’ll come to no harm. In this place only creatures long in tooth and dark of hearts need fear. Be thankful he guards us, for the creatures that await us are worst of all.”

The human saw the sharp spike of Pyrite’s horn bathed in a familiar silver-white glow and instinctively drew in his arms. He turned his eyes away to more a welcome sight of embers under a chicken.

Putting distance between himself and the manticore, confidence swelled back into Cozen’s voice. “The stratadon, mayhap the oldest of any monster here. Forged by th’ bitter cold darkness and birthed from hatred. Ever loyal servant to Tirek, the Master of Darkness hisself. The mighty reptile what dragged away at least a third of ponies from the ancestral Dream Valley across the dark skies—for his very presence frightened the unicorns so badly that they dropped the sun—to his home, the dreadful Castle Midnight. To untrained eyes the old thing looks somethin’ like a dragon, but he’s far littler and stupider than the likes of them. I’d be more eager to meet a dragon atop a mountain though, if ye want to know to truth. A dragon ‘art may be swathed in flames but it’s still made of blood and flesh just like us. But the stratadon? Tis all hollow in that scaly chest, nothin’ but shadows of shadows an’ blackness.”

Alright, that was just ridiculous.

The human could understand the business with the wolf or maybe even the rooster, those things were at least resembled their descriptions, but there was just no way anyone could mistake that swarm of butterflies for...

And then he looked. Just as he expected there were five and twenty swallowtails in the air, a dandelion inspired more fear than they. But he noticed the awestruck faces of the audience clinging together in the night ready to faint or flee in sheer terror and looked again. For half a heartbeat, perhaps through his eyelashes when he blinked, the human saw it.

A great wyrm of hard scales and fire colder than cold. Everything around it, everything about it was dark, dark, dark and the man was suddenly convinced the sun would never rise and the night would go on forever. A long serpentine neck stretched to a sky suddenly bereft of stars and screeched like iron towers collapsing into themselves. The human saw the translucent silver bubble of a cage and in the corner of his eye, a forgotten subsection of his heart he saw the wolf made of wood, a great green wasset, the stony hulk of the Rockdog. He saw them all.

Then he blinked and the world was as it had always been. The human saw a cluster of ponies ready to eat their own tongues in fright, a donkey, and a cluster of green swallowtails twisting in the empty air. He waited to see if it would happen again, but it never did. He shook off the shadow of the stratadon and tended to his supper.

  At the foot of the cage, the donkey was shuffling his hooves.  “Friends, ol’ Cozen owes you an apology. We advertised an Ursa Minor earlier and a pair cockatrice instead of just one. I’m sorry to say that’s no longer true. Tisn’t any fault of ours! We ‘ad both these creatures but half a fortnight ago -- ask around the Kingdom, they’ll affirm it I bet – but y’see friends, we had a…incident.”

The hen was finally finished -- as finished as he could manage with such a weak fire -- with the skin cooked golden as the rising sun and twice as welcome.

“’Ere’s a tale for you: that half fortnight ago, the Showmaster played a game of backgammon with our young fortune teller with the silly beard with yours truly waitin’ to play the winner—t’was Pyrite, if ye want to know—when we all ‘erd a calamity of roars and screaming.”

The trifling meat was rough and dryer than sarcasm, but the smell of it woke the man’s stomach and made him instantly forgive any and all faults of the hen. This was a beautiful, glorious hen, finest in the world.

“Well, we all went in a mad dash t’see the cause and wouldn’t ye know somethin’ had raided our cages. Yes, _these_ very cages, preyin’ upon our monsters as if they were no more than a bunch of helpless piglets in a pen. T’was with no small amount of fortune and bravery from the Showmaster we stopped the rampage and captured it.”

The hunger he’d ignored all day threatened to gnaw right through him when the soothing warmth of the bird blossomed in his cheeks. The human didn’t think anything could have stolen his attention.  

 “Remember this night, friends. For the first time in eons, witness the most dangerous being to ever walk the earth. Fillies and gentlecolts: the contradiction creature!”

The familiar phrase caught his ear, somehow rising above through the blissful call of food. The human looked up as he tore off a second hen leg, then flinched as though stuck. They had snuck upon him with quiet footsteps hidden behind overzealous donkey brays and snapping of hen bones.

A long row of unicorns crowded shoulder to shoulder around the cage of black thorns. The light from the dying fire gave the rainbow of coats the same slight reddish tinge, and with the tight bars partially blocking his view it was hard to tell when one pony stopped and another began. Except for their many many many many eyes. Their already huge eyes more enormous with awe and terror filling them up.

The human had never seen such a number of any sapient creatures before—the greatest number before now was a party of griffon fledglings that stopped to rest in the iron bones of a tower some years ago, and even then there were only six of them and a fair distance away. He’d certainly never seen this many ponies before and until now Star Swirl was the only pony he’d seen up close.

There couldn’t have been more than thirty ponies, but they might as well have numbered in thousands. A universe of staring eyes met him at all sides, the chain around his neck suddenly felt tighter, the thorns around him crept closer. He wanted to move away to the back of his cage, but the eyes waited for him there as well. Instead, he tried to shrink into his bearskin, longing for his cloak, and tried to concentrate on his supper.

“The Ursa Minor and the cockatrice are still here... in a way,” croaked Cozen’s brushfire voice somewhere outside the unending wall of eyes. “Ye can see the fur peeled off the bones of the Ursa’s shoulders now cloakin’ around ‘im. No fur of his own, of course. Has to steal them from other creatures, it’s death what keeps that one warm. As for the cockatrice, well... it’s halfway here at least.”

The human spared a glance to the broken rib cage jutting out of the hen.

“But why would Pyrite help him burn it?” asked a mare’s voice.

“Pyrite’s many things, but a firemaker’s not one of ‘em. The creature called up that flame all on ‘is own this very night. From the look of how it’s cowerin’ in the rocks like that, it’s plenty frightened too. Can’t say I blame it. The other beasts here, they’re only wantin’ a simple meal or they’re goin’ by some basic want or instinct they can’t much ‘elp. Ah, but this one. This one’s never satisfied. It kills one thing and then it kills again, and it just goes on killing even after it stops bein’ hungry. Tis slower than the timberwolf or manticore, but if ye manage to outrun a timberwolf t’will eventually see sense and go home. But once the contradiction creature sets those tiny eyes on you they’ll never forget. It doesn’t care if it’s stilted legs got to go over mountains or boat across oceans, sometimes callin’ in the aid of other predators t’help track you down. They can bend other predators to their will and their alliance with wolves are th’ stuff of legend. When it runs out of things to hunt, the contradiction creature is known to turn upon its own kind. How awful, the only one that murder one of your own, can you possibly imagine?”

The mare from before spoke up again, “But what about the griffon conflict in the purple mountains? And don’t dragons fight to the death sometimes? And come to think of it, when the Hegemony started hovering of the Earth Pony Nation weren’t there reports of—”

“Completely different things and I’ll _thank_  the audience for holding questions until after the tour. Perhaps this creature has a reason, some backwards bit of monster logic that calls for blood but more often ‘tis for no reason at all. It looks somethin’ slight compared to the might of the manticore, but make no mistake, it—”

“I think it’s got tears in its eyes.” It was the orange filly that asked earlier about snow wassets.

The donkey’s speech stumbled for a moment. “It does?”

_I_ **_do_ ** _?_

The human rubbed an eye and to his surprise his hand came away wet. When did that start happening? The firelight must have been bothering his eyes. Surely it was nothing more. Regardless, his cheeks burned as he felt the unending mass of eyes stronger than ever before. The human took his hen and turned to face the other way. But of course there were eyes there, too. There was nowhere to go.

 Cozen cleared his throat. “Don’t be foolish, child. Above all else the contradiction creature’s known for cunning. It knew how to kill an Ursa Minor, I’d not be surprised if it knew how to coax the ‘art of a foolish young filly that like to interrupt. Besides, if you were a lord of the world caught by ‘is own prey you’d have tears of frustration too.”  

The filly wrinkled her nose like an upset blanket and stared at the human as if she was going to argue further. But she didn’t.

“‘Tis unknown,” said a somewhat rumpled donkey, “how many of these are left in the world. Last report was a hundred years ago at least, someplace near the griffon territories. Might be none at all roamin’ the world now that this one lives with us. Folks, let’s hope so.”

With that, the show was over. The human’s fire had gone out and with the orange tint gone the colors of the unicorns’ coats returned and amorphous mass of ponies became individuals once more. They wandered off in sets of twos and threes back into the fields with a greater sense of dangers waiting for them out in the night. The orange filly was the last to leave. She sat on her haunches watching him quietly through a veil of stringy green mane, looking more carrot than pony.

The human ate the rest of his meal in relative peace. The creeping ordeal of the carnival still loomed over him and robbed the hen of the satisfaction it had before. The meat was cold and tough and only the burned parts had any taste at all.

The filly watched until he was finished. Then she stood and walked away by herself.

As the human began putting aside the chicken bones in a farther corner of the cage, he heard the sound of hooves and for a moment thought the little one had returned. He knew better than that even before he looked up.

Pyrite and the human watched each other through the bars for a few moments; both parties guarding their airs close to them as if players in game of cards.

The unicorn gave a polite nod of the head. “Evening. Did you enjoy your cockatrice dinner?”

“I’ve had better,” the man said evenly. “Would have been nice to have more time to cook it and you didn’t give me a very strong flame, either. And the hen was gamey.”

“So sorry to hear that. I’ll be sure to accommodate you better next time if you agree to be better behaved.”

The human blinked and looked about him, as if he could find the point he’d missed flying in the open air. “Pardon me?”

“Just what was that supposed to be, earlier? That melodramatic business with the tears? ‘Tis fortunate old Cozen’s faster with his wits than his legs or the whole act would have gone sour.” Pyrite shrugged his bony shoulders with a huff. “But I can understand first night jitters, I suppose. I shall find it in my heart forgive you.”

The human’s mouth slowly opened to respond, but then closed when it could find nothing reasonable to say. Instead, he shrugged innocently and shifted position so that his thin lock pick was better hidden in the folds of bear skin. The last thing he needed was for it to slip out.

The copper unicorn smiled without mirth and passively shook his head. A strict father ashamed of his rebellious son’s wild ways and outlandish outfits, but positive he could get him back on the righteous path. “For a supposed lord of the world, you’re not very smart. What could you possibly have been thinking? Wandering out into the world by yourself where any random rockslide or scheduled ice storm or marauding hydra could kill you? A rare, breakable thing like yourself should have stayed cloistered up where you were and you know it. So you can just stop giving me that woebegone face you’ve been putting on this instant. It’s your own fault you got caught, so just live with it.”

“I cannot stay here,” the human replied, trying to ignore the fair point about staying in his city. “I was searching for something when you picked me up. I cannot find it if you keep me here. I’m needed by someone... or something. I think.”

Pyrite’s smirk eased on his face like a weasel winding out of a tunnel. “Oh, you’re quite right on that point. Indeed, you are desperately needed. I have been waiting for something like you for a very long time, human. Does your heart not gaily leap to know you are so useful?”

The chains clinked against each other as the man fidgeted against them and quietly wondered to himself what a smug unicorn’s throat would feel like in his hands.

“Ah, yes!” The candlelight danced in Pyrite’s one green eye. He did a little excited stamp with a fore hoof. “Yes, yes, _yes_! There it is! That’s exactly the look I was waiting on. Oh, it’s even better than I imagined! If only you’d had it while there was still a crowd. Such ferocity, such hard and pitiless determination! Truly, truly the paragon of predators. I’ll bet there is no end to the horrible things you imagine doing to me, am I right? One of those cruel steel knives carving into my belly, or perhaps an arrow sticking out of my eye socket? Perhaps you can already hear the crunch of my skull under your boot. Not that you have boots or arrows or knifes, nor shall you ever. It’s still a pleasant thought though, isn’t it?”

Pyrite did a little jig in the grass as if he were a colt with a new toy. Behind the wall of thorns, the human’s previous ire quickly congealed into nausea.

Wishing to change the subject from bloodthirsty fantasies, he offered, “You know, I’m really not that good of a catch. Why not something fiercer? You could catch yourself a dragon or a big colony of attercop. I would imagine a web filled with dozens of hissing attercop with shining little red eyes would be much more impressive than I.” His manacled hands gestured apathetically. “All I’ve to offer is a cross face and a half eaten, err… ‘cockatrice’. I’m not much. Honestly, I’m not. Only a slender little thing who never killed anything meaner than a drooling coyote with an attitude problem.”

Pyrite squinted at him for a moment, then blinked in disbelief. “You’re serious. You truly _are_  serious.” When the star of his show only frowned in confusion, the unicorn came closer.  The thorns were a sneeze away from putting out his other eye. He was close enough for the human to notice the strange mark on his flank: three links of chain that seemed to have no beginning or end, twisting into each other forever and always.

“You really don’t know, do you? You honestly have no idea what you are capable of, even with your satchel full of iron teeth.” He made an odd sound, something between the shadow of a sigh and the echo of laugh. “Well, no matter. You’ll remember yourself in time, I’ll be sure to see to that. It wouldn’t be the first time Pyrite the Bold dealt with carnivores stingy with their claws.”

The human spared a glance toward the growling manticore’s transparent cage. For the first time he noticed how sharply its ribs poked out. The lines of faded scars along its back. The burn patches of missing fur.

Pyrite’s copper coat shone penny bright. “Yes, there was a time once when the manticore also looked at me with sad eyes and gave off that same irritating doleful look. Didn’t take that much to turn her around, though. Perhaps a month at most.”

The Showmaster casually lifted an apple with a silver glow of magic and shone it against his jerkin. “Now, _you_. You, with your famous reputation for being stubborn, will no doubt be more work. At least thrice the time the manticore took, I’m sure.”

He bit into the red gala. Spurts of apple juice dotted the man’s cage. “But once Cozen gets over worrying about fur loss, we can turn you around, I’m sure of it. Soon your eyes will strike fear into the hearts of mares, just as if the Roc itself bore down on them. Foals will wake at the midnight hour clutching their blankets from nightmares of you. You’ll be famous and won’t that be simply delightful?”

The human leaned forward, ignoring the chain digging in his neck and sharp pricks against his skin. “The roc? Do you mean the White Roc?”

Pyrite chewed the last of his apple and swiveled an ear. “Ah, you’re familiar with General Yarak’s famed roc. Then surely you also know how fortunate you are to travel with a cultured unicorn of the world, rather than stuck with a mad old brute of a pegasus.”

“Do you perhaps know where I can find it? Please?”

Pyrite only ignored him.

After a moment of thought the man offered, “You know, there are better things a cultured unicorn of the world could do with his talents.”

“Oh?” Pyrite’s voice had suddenly become dangerously soft. The breeze had frightened a candle flame away. “What would _you_  propose I ought to do with my talents, then?”

“You could…” the human paused.

Nothing good could come of whatever he said next. His mouth contradicted his sense and spoke anyway. “You could treat your creatures better than this. A healthy wolf must make for a more frightening timberwolf than an ill one. Besides, I always heard that the little ponies were supposed to care for their fellow creatures. You could let me go. I don’t belong here, and I know that you know it. It may be wise to release that poor manticore, too. Or feed the poor thing more often at the very least. Really, Pyrite, have you no—"

The human’s voice was crushed out of him as the chains suddenly yanked him to the back of the cage. The floorboards rattled as he crashed on top of them.

Over the man’s strangled coughing Pyrite’s voice rose to a shout. “Arrogant beast, how **dare**  you presume to tell me what I ought or ought not do! Have you any notion of what I’ve been through to get here? _Had_   I better prospects, do you think I would be trudging through the backwoods of the Kingdom with a filthy donkey, a hollow horn, and sideshow full of blunt fangs and empty threats? I ought to be in the court entertaining King Mohs and his nobles! I—”

The Showmaster paused to steady his breath. He magically brushed back the frazzled strands of yellow mane back into place. The candlelight dared to come out of hiding.

The coughing man tried to sit up, but a glowing chain slammed him back down and held him there. “Oh, no. You can just stay down there. I don’t care if I crush your larynx, the show doesn’t require you to speak. Made all the better for it, in fact.”

Pyrite pawed the dirt and snorted. “You know what you are? Selfish. You are a selfish, inconsiderate cadge. You’re the greatest attraction this carnival has seen in years. Tonight alone I made more than I have in the past two weeks, and that’s even with little time to promote and with you spiting me with your stupid, frightened eyes. Think of how much I’ll make in a month! Think of your young hollow friend and the softer bed he could afford with all the extra bits you’ll rake in. Didn’t even consider that, did you? No, do _not_ answer that question, it was rhetorical.

“Wanting to leave, the very idea! Wanting to leave even after I gave you food and shelter, even after I spoke to you kindly and loosed your fetters. And for what? To get your idiot self impaled on the talons of Yarak’s roc. I’ve never seen such thanklessness! And suggesting I let up on the manticore, too! Human, do you _want_  me to end up in the poorhouse? Selfish, selfish, selfish, _selfish_!”

With that, Pyrite stuck his nose in the air and stomped off. Almost as an afterthought the thorn cage suddenly closed in on itself, shrinking by a foot.

A few wagons away the little diamond dog tossed restlessly in his sleep. The ill she-wolf lapped at her water and the rooster pecked blindly at his corn. The weasel chattered to himself and wound itself up in tight pointless circles. Five and twenty swallowtails beat their fierce stratadon wings. The manticore rumbled deep in the caverns of her stomach and stared into the night. The human curled his legs in to keep the thorns from pricking his feet and rubbed his bruised, aching throat.


	4. The Silver Bubbles & the Red Dawn

The silver fetters proved more difficult than the human expected. It wasn’t so much the locks themselves, but a case of maneuvering the pick. The fat lock dangling on his neck came first and was by far the hardest. There was no way to tell for certain, but it had taken at least an hour to work, likely more. His hands only could only move so far in clinking chains, and he had to keep blindly feeling about at the lock resting upon his collarbone to find a good angle for the pick. More than once the iron lock pick slipped or he prodded too hard, spinning the lock out of place.

It would have been easier to simply undo his manacles first so he at least more freedom of movement, but _that_  lock had to go first. It had to. He poked and prodded and tweaked and coaxed and cursed until there was a faint click — no louder than a beetle’s footstep — a sound so sweet he wanted to sob at the beauty of it. The man took a second to rub his chafed neck with a new appreciation for the feel of the air on his skin, then retrieved the lock pick and went back to work.

Star Swirl arrived shortly after the manacle locks — exasperating to open with just one hand — were finished. He trotted along in a swish of black silk and jingling brass bells, with bright eyes and spirit in his step. There were three jingles for every hoof’s step, the bag he carried banged against his rump with a clatter, and by the time he got to the human’s cage all the animals were awake. One by one they raised their heads as he passed in a happy racket and stared as he went by, save for the manticore who’d already been awake. The little blue unicorn was blessed sight but the fellow had all the stealth of bulldozers barreling though a bedroom.

“I know, I know, I should have arrived hours ago, I’m sorry. If it wasn’t rewriting Cozen’s script it was talking down the Showmaster. Sun and stars above us, was he in a state! I’m amazed I managed getting him to sleep at all the way he carried on. What in the heavens’ name did you—” Then Star Swirl saw the human’s neck.

“I thought maybe I could appeal to his better nature,” the human said in a scraggly voice. “I’m sorry, I should have taken your advice.”

“Oh, don’t... don’t worry about it. Does that hurt?”

“Less than before. But if Pyrite sleeps, what about the donkey?”

“Oh, I told Cozen I saw a thin patch in the base of his mane. He’ll be fretting at the mirror all night trying to find it and when he finds nothing he’ll have convinced himself the patch is there and look even harder,” explained Star Swirl not a little proudly. “Cozen’s got the sense to know you ought not be here but not enough to know why. He’s convinced whatever malady made all your hair fall out is contagious.”

The human looked down at his hands working the locks, busy, brown, and furless. He felt at the bearskin and asked, “Those unicorns wouldn’t have known what I was without the wonder of the Ursa skin, would they? The same way those swallowtails made up a stratadon.”

“Personally, I’d have left you as you were. The fire's evidence enough to prove a human, but I can understand using the bearskin for a bit of extra assurance. Some ponies need a more than a simple illusion to take a butterfly for a stratadon just as they need a chilling tale, a false Ursa skin and a real human’s fire to see the human.”

The human’s dark eyes darted from the fetter locks and peered at him through the thorns. “But you didn’t.”

In the curved shadows of the bars the unicorn smiled at him, soft and sure and a little sad. “No. I didn’t. I know you as surely as any constellation in the sky. I could forget myself and my kingdom and my lineage and if I knew absolutely nothing else I would still know you. I don’t understand how anypony can’t feel it, the complete absence of magic around you. It’s like... a tear in the universe.” After a moment of silence he said, “Old Pyrite might be dreaming of your old world horrors, but I know you’re more than some fearsome predator. I know there is more power in those paws than their flat little claws.”

“Then will you help me get out?”

Star Swirl looked again at the necklace of little purple tracks above the human’s collarbone. “Oh, absolutely.” He dropped the human’s bag on the grass, pulled back his lips and began chewing into the thorns.

The man watched uncomfortably before going back to the fetters. Before long there was a soft click and the fourth lock fell away. One fetter left to go, and then there wasn’t much left to do than just watch, wait, and wince as Star Swirl’s teeth cut through the rows of thorns.

After some time he wondered, “Do you really need to get through like that? Isn’t there a less painful way to get me out?”  

The unicorn spat out a few thorns and ran his tongue along the edge of his mouth. His blue muzzle was already speckled with red. “There is. Your cage is held together at the top, fastened with a simple little latch. With a simple lift the bars open and fall away like a blossoming flower. If I had wings you’d have been free a long time ago.” He adjusted his position to find a less thorny vine, which was about as fruitful as finding a less damp part of the sea.

“But couldn’t you just magically undo the lock? The same way Pyrite moved the chains and the apple he ate?”

Star Swirl didn’t answer him, just spat out more thorns and looked away. His ears blushed and flattened against his head; the eager wonder in his eyes had run away and hidden someplace secret.

The human frowned, wondering if he had said something wrong. He wanted to ask about it but then looked up to see the moon in descent, low and white in the dark grey sea of sky with the promise of dawn fast on its heels. The last fetter lock had been shoddily fastened and fell away with barely a poke, easy and anticlimactic. He pushed the silver piles of metal to a far corner of the cage where he wouldn’t have to look at them anymore.

He moved closer to where Star Swirl was tearing at the thorns. Every bite from his flat teeth came harder, faster, more determined as the both of them felt the seconds snowball into precious, agonizing minutes.

There was now a long scar of open air running along bottom getting wider and wider and the human started to fidget, for he could already feel the grass under his feet. Star Swirl spat out a mass of red and black thorns every few seconds but it was the only pause he gave before diving back in, looking more like a wild carnivore of the carnival digging into the soft belly of a rabbit than a pony.

Finally he reared up and with a fierce tug, ripped away a long, long black vine from the structure as if pulling loose thread from a sweater. The scar in the cage had become a wide gaping wound of yellow field and open air.

Star Swirl stepped back with a sigh, spitting out the last mouthful of thorns and rubbing his muzzle against his cape. His spritely pink beard had turned the soft crimson of the roses decorating the cage. “Come down, human. You are freed.”

The human ducked under the hole, careful to mind the vines, and stepped back into the world. He wobbled in an awkward little dance as his bare feet searched for a patch of grass without any thorns in it. Then he stretched, delighting in his ability to do so, and his bones made a sound like snapping branches.

Star Swirl stepped back from the human, staring up with wide dark eyes. “Oh,” he said in a hushed voice. “I didn’t think you’d be so...  big. I mean in the cage, it was different but now...”

The man leaned down, grabbing his grey bag then rolling it over his shoulder in one swift motion, and for a small moment he and the unicorn were at eye level again. “But I’m no different than before,” said the voice just above Star Swirl’s head. “Just standing out here instead of sitting in there.”

The gangly fortune teller fidgeted in his cape, unsure of how to argue or articulate how the ominous atmosphere of the predator menagerie slowly dripped and thawed away in the human’s presence. How the little rip in the universe seemed to get a little bigger by the second. Star Swirl flicked his tail and looked at the cage next to them. The silver sheen was paler; the roaring stratadon was still there but the scales were stretched thin over a skeleton of fluttering swallowtails.

The human was watching them too. “I don’t know how I ever mistook these things for anything else. It was odd… I saw them for half a moment just as they were described. Does this place look that way to you all the time?”

“Not exactly. I’ve worked under Pyrite for some time, so I know better. I often see cockatrice or timberwolves in the corner of my eye but they melt back into their true form a moment after. It comes and goes. That I am also not a mess of fright ready to believe what any carnival barker wants me to helps quite bit in that regard. But I’m not surprised that of all the creatures you saw the stratadon. It’s been with the carnival for a very long time, before all the others, even before Cozen and I. It’s a legitimate spell, not just a simple illusion.” The unicorn squinted at what was once a tunnel of gnashing teeth, now an outline of quivering butterfly antennae. “The Lord of Midnight Castle made his stratadon the same way, though old Pyrite could only summon up a shadow of the original spell, if you’ll excuse the term. He cannot truly change a creature into something it is not the way Tirek did. Nopony can. Given that, ‘tis an impressive feat — even the butterflies are convinced. Perhaps them most of all.”

Star Swirl followed the human as he stalked about the cage, watching with a quietly thoughtful expression. The silver barrier thinned away the closer the man came to it until it was no more visible than a spider web, making shaking ripples through the air. The man scratched his fuzzy chin in a curious way, and then casually reached out to touch with a thin finger.

The barrier popped like a soap bubble. Five and twenty butterflies sailed into the night in a single emerald pulsating wave. Star Swirl watched it rise up and up before they dove down at him in a fierce stoop, beating their angry green wings when they landed on his flank and shoulders, furious and wondering why they could not carry this insolent unicorn away in their claws.

“Little ones, your master was dead and gone long before your grandmothers’ grandmothers laid their eggs,” he chuckled. “You wouldn’t even have anywhere to take me. Go find some nice buttercups to eat instead before you hurt yourselves.”

The swallowtails paid him no mind but continued to bash their frail little bodies against him. A swish of his tail or shake of shoulders would send them away for a short time before a few came back. Star Swirl hoped they would give up eventually; it was difficult enough getting ponies to take him serious without a horde of butterflies making things worse.

He was so preoccupied with the butterflies almost didn’t notice the wolf running past him. He stepped out of the way as she loped into the distance, apparently too busy coughing to notice him. A white ribbon of a weasel cut through the grass not far behind her.  

The human stood in the middle of the carnival awkwardly holding a red riot of feathers and claws away from his face and very much regretting the decision to pick up the rooster. It was with no small amount of juggling and luck the blindfold finally came off. The rooster pecked the offending hand for the trouble before strutting with his beak in the air.

The diamond dog was the only one that hadn’t run away when his bubble popped. He crouched near the stony edge of its platform pacing back and forth, longingly staring at the ground so close yet so far away from stubby legs unused to walking any farther than ten steps. He cringed under the human’s shadow, as he often did in new encounters and couldn’t seem to decide whether to shut his eyes or stare at the open field where the others had long escaped.

When the man touched him they both flinched. His hand cradled the dog’s great clunky paw as if it were a baby bird, and waited patiently for the paw to stop shaking. The paw wrapped around his fingers and squeezed.

For the first time that night the human smiled. He had forgotten what it felt like to hold someone’s hand.

Slowly, gently, the diamond dog was lifted up by his hulking sturdy arms and helped down into the tawny grass. He looked up and the human was surprised to discover the keen awareness in the chartreuse eyes, just like the ponies held in theirs. The dog stood there for while looking at him, holding his hand in the only true way to hold a hand: firm, gentle, with acres of trust. When the hand went limp in his grip he let it go, watching it go away from him and into the human’s pocket. The diamond dog tried to say something, not with barks or whimpers as the man half expected, but clearly forming words. Yet the only sound was the opening and closing of his jaw.

There was a pale scar running along the base of his throat, barely visible under a red collar. The human stared at it as Pyrite’s words lingered with him. _The show doesn’t require you to speak._ His expression hardened.

The diamond dog walked a small distance, turned to the human and waved. He wagged a stubby tail when the human waved back. Then with strong shovel-like paws he tore into the ground in a blur of dirt and dust and soon a tunnel among upturned earth was all that was left.

The human looked over his shoulder at the last occupied cage. The manticore stared back at him.

Her eyes had been on him since the human picked the first lock, but only now did they draw him in, two ghost lights bright in the dark. The thin cage rumbled, rolling along the ground, soaking into the soles of his feet. A golden mass of muscles and patchy fur and years and years of hunger towered over him, though the manticore could not have been more than half a foot taller than he. A scruff of ruddy fur framed the creature’s face, short and wispy, more dandelion fluff than a mighty swath of mane. The scorpion tail dragged across the floor, the death-filled tip twitching, the only part of the manticore that moved. The man blinked at it slowly with the calm of a hurricane eye.

Somewhere behind him a voice yelped as loud as it dared and hooves took flight. The human turned just in time to see Star Swirl skid to a stop in a little explosion of gritty dust cloud a foot or so away. The unicorn with blood in his beard dared not come closer, but stamped at the ground, trotting anxiously back and forth. “What are you _doing_?” he hissed, knowing full well what the human was doing. “Have you any idea what time it is? We need to go.”

He was right, of course. Dawn was already pushing through the delicate safety of the dark. The sun was cozied up in a wooly coat of grey clouds, peering out under a cumulus hood. It had caught up to them quietly, tiptoeing through the butterfly wings besieging Star Swirl, leaking through interlocked fingers and diamond dog paws. There was no more reason to stay. There was also no way to outrun a manticore and though his knives were safely back in his possession, the human knew he could not outfight a manticore either.

He could have left then.

He should have left then.

But those ribs.

Those ribs and that bony spine and those scars stretched on the fur in a map of misery. The human could hear the echo of a cavernous stomach above the rumblings in its throat. He wondered whether was once a time when the manticore cowered before a silver glow, before the light in her eyes turned harsh and unforgiving.

The human could not let the manticore go, it was starving. The human had to let the manticore go, she was starving. Starving with a sapling of a man and a little blue unicorn with a bloody beard standing before her.

“You can’t.” Star Swirl inched closer to nose at the human’s leg. “It will kill us both.”

The human just blinked at him, then moved closer to the manticore and reached out an arm.

“You can’t! What is the point of escape if only to be torn apart in a maw of teeth not an hour later? I don’t know where you came from but I know you must have come from very far away and I know there is a very good chance you are the only one of your kind left. The last human in the world would have come and endured all this way only to die pointlessly. You _can’t_.”

After a moment the man ran a hand through the thick curls of his hair and looked back at him with a sigh. “The point,” he said “is knowing that little grey dog’s had perhaps the first kind touch in his life and the sick wolf loped away to spend its last days in peace. And then this manticore is left here alone, hungry and scared.”

Star Swirl just stamped at the dust again as his blood screamed for him to run. He backed a little closer and leaned against the human, partly in hope of shoving the legs into motion and partly to keep himself from collapsing with fright. He tried not to look at the manticore’s ears twitching at every jingle from the dinner bell on his cape.

Over the manticore’s thunder the human whispered, “Be still.”

“You’ve a plan for leaving this place uneaten, yes? Yes?”

“Trust me,” the human said. Which did not answer to the question at all.

The manticore’s cage did not vanish with a pop. When his fingers touched it the film of translucent silver shimmered and the membrane stretched under his skin. The bubble hadn’t broken on contact, but it still had all the resistance of a wet paper. A nose and a row of fangs breathed fog against it.

The human placed his free hand on Star Swirl’s shoulder. At the manticore he said, or perhaps only thought, “I would greatly appreciate it if you did not eat us.” 

And he pushed through. The silver bubble quivered and collapsed, folding inside itself gentle and inconsequential as scarves falling from a shelf.

The manticore tensed every muscle she had and roared. Ponies twenty miles away felt it in their hooves. The air snapped under the leather wings as a mass of fur, fangs, claws, and venom tore into the dawn. An empty platform flipped over, tumbling into the grass as a lashing tail struck it.

A blue and pink tumble of unicorn who’d quite forgotten where he was ran blindly into the human, bowling them both over as the manticore sailed over both of them.

“It missed?”

“No. It wasn’t aiming for us.”

In the half second between the cage collapsing and the awful roar, a door slammed and there was a familiar voice, adder low and thick with loss.

“You wretched hollow horn.”

Star Swirl, unraveling himself from a tangle of arms, legs, and cape, flinched at the sound.  

The dawn siphoned out the bluster in Pyrite’s voice, in the dim sunlight his presence shrank like a damp woolen sweater. The eye patch had been left in the wagon, along with his jerkin and a donkey too sensible to step outdoors. One lonely, lost green eye stared at them beside two long scars stretching across his face like abandoned train tracks.

The human saw him in the gap of space between the rising predator and the empty field before the unicorn crumbled under the weight of the manticore. He blinked at both of them impassively and turned to Star Swirl, lying beside him in the grass, staring straight ahead and looking very much like a small rabbit under headlights.

The man stood slowly, with a hand under the collar of unicorn's cape to help him back on his hooves. When they were both standing the hand moved to his withers and grasped him. Star Swirl was a little startled at how soft his touch was, despite the strong grip.

“Walk with me,” the human said in a low voice. “Slowly. Try not to look. Pretend it’s not there.”

“But—” They had begun moving, though the young unicorn could not imagine how his petrified legs managed it.

“The manticore is... distracted, but at the sound of running prey she may give chase. So do not behave as prey. Walk with me, Star Swirl and think about something else. Perhaps think of how nice it is to see sunshine after a thunderstorm or flower blossoms on a tree or think of your star charts. Think of a song, or better yet, sing one quietly. Think of something. Don’t think about it.”

There was an awful wet crunch behind them, and the hand on Star Swirl’s withers shook just a little. He looked into the distant sky and softly sang into the sour breeze.

“ _From the sun comes light_

_From the sun comes power_

_O, ‘tis the sun aloft in the sky_

_That makes the flowers flower_ ”

The pair walked in the tall yellow grasses toward a hill in the distance where a winding dirt road waited for them. Their shadows reached behind them to the cadaverous carnival as Star Swirl’s ballad muffled the crunch of bones until it was the only sound with them.

_“From the sun comes hope_

_From the sun comes laughter_

_With the sun in Her place,_

_We'll embrace a happy ever after_

_Summer, winter, fall and spring,_

_Ah, it makes the whole world sing...”_

 

The song of the sun gently wrapped around the human and unicorn traveling under the grey sky, strong as a shimmering silver bubble. Fragile, beautiful, impervious to reality bumping against it.  


	5. The Dirt Road

Star Swirl lay in the dappled shadow of a maple tree, hiding his face in the crook of his forelegs, his cape bunched and bent over his shoulders. Every once in awhile he would give a small sign of life, a muffled moan of sorrow or a small fit of shivers that would run from the tip of his horn to the base of his tail. The picked bones of the Carnival of Carnivores had been left miles behind, but as the sun broke through clouds as it eased into midday, the reality of what had just happened caught up to him. When they stopped to rest, the aftershock hit the unicorn hard. He had been this way for well over an hour.

“Did you see the way he looked at me?”

The human nestled in the maple where thick branches curled inward to make a little crook just large enough to support his weight as he leaned against the trunk, shoulders shining in the sun. Above his head hung a row of clothes, freshly washed in the nearby stream and colors washed out from age, strung along the branch like little standards in the breeze. He had his pack in his lap as he reorganized inventory, one leg curled beneath him while the other dangled above Star Swirl’s withers swinging like a sign come off its hinge.

“Yes,” said the human. “I saw. Though I didn’t think he was looking at you specifically.”

“No, he was. He came out and he looked at the barren cage, then at you, then at the ground, and then he looked at me. Nopony’s ever looked at me that way before.”

The man reached up to feel one of his shirts. It was still a bit damp, but good enough to wear. “What way did he look at you?”

“I... I am not sure, exactly. But wasn’t what I expected. I thought he might be enraged or betrayed or shocked or vengeful but he was none of those. He looked the way one feels looking at ashes of a burnt house. I might call it loss but it was too bitter for loss, or too stubborn perhaps. I don’t know.” Star Swirl rolled over and shook his head. “It’s just such a terrible way to leave the world.”

“There are worse ways to go.” The human’s dangling foot patted the bunched cape on unicorn’s shoulder in what he hoped what a comforting gesture. After a quiet moment he added, “And you didn’t kill your showmaster.” The human said it plainly, as if guessing at a chance of rain or counting shingles on a roof. When Star Swirl only looked up at him with large wavering eyes the human said it again, for it seemed worth repeating. “You did not kill Pyrite. The manticore did.”

“I helped put the pieces into place, though.”

“If you are guilty for setting free what set the manticore free then Pyrite himself is guilty for not feeding the manticore in the first place. I’m positive if she were well fed and in better spirits, she’d have simply wandered off into the fields the same way the other creatures did.” The human swung the other leg over the branch for better leverage as he climbed back into his green tunic. Far better traveling clothes than the bearskin he left behind. “If it makes you feel any better, it happened quickly and I don’t think he felt much. Besides, if anyone’s responsible, I am. You didn’t know what I was going to do, and I was going to let her go in any case. There wasn’t much you could have done.”

Star Swirl looked up, though from his position he mostly saw legs, branches and flashes of elbows busy with folding laundry. The human looked no more out of place in than a blossom on a branch. It seemed more like the tree that had grown around him, that he was the one that had always been there and it was the land slowly growing around him that was foreign.

“You say it so casually.”

“I say it truthfully.”

“And you carry no guilt about it, as I do. Though considering the... circumstances of your relationship, I suppose it makes sense.”

“I didn’t think you had the best relationship with him yourself.”

“I didn’t. I never liked him much at all. I think I might have even hated him, but death seems to change the way one feels about a pony. I’ve never seen anyone die before. Not up close. Have you?”

“Just once.” There was distance in the human’s voice. It did not falter or dwindle, the tone had not changed, but it sounded as if it were floating away somewhere or hiding under a quilt. Star Swirl had to look again to make sure he was still sitting in the same place.

“I can feel guilt,” said the human. “I can feel a lot of things. I just don’t feel guilty about this in particular. I feel a little bad that someone died but it’s not the same thing. At least I don’t think so. Other humans have spent a long time worrying over what could never be changed, we have a talent for forbidding things to be as they are. Perhaps in another time or place I’d feel the same as you feel now. There is a lot in the world to mourn and feel sorry for. Pyrite part of it, I suppose. But I don’t have time for it now. There is too much to do. I have no time.”

The pack plopped into the grass with the human close behind, swinging off the branch with a small hop off the trunk with more ease than Star Swirl had expected for such a large creature. The unicorn stood and shook the grass and uncomfortable feelings out of the wrinkles of his cape. He watched as the human adjusted argyle socks and poked at his boots.

In the chaos of being tossed about from pony to pony, taken in and out of wagons, being grabbed by their strings and dragged in the dirt, the shoes had split apart and broken. Star Swirl began to give his condolences, as the human was already trying to make do with the tattered things. The problem was solved before he got a word out. Dextrous fingers were already weaving the little strings in and out the split layers of shoe, and with a light tug the layers suddenly stood firm to hug the human’s ankles, just as if they had never been broken at all. It was like watching a flower open up in reverse. It had happened all so quickly! The unicorn poked it gingerly with a hoof.

The human lifted an eyebrow at him. “What? You’ve never seen shoes before?”

“None that were fixed so quickly. You must be a talented cobbler.” Star Swirl poked the boot again, astounded with the handiwork.

The eyebrow lifted higher and the man wrinkled his brow. “They weren’t broken. They’re not even worn. out. I just tied them.” When the unicorn just stared at him, he explained, “It’s... just how people shoes work. These won’t wear out for a long while, they’re still very sturdy.” He knocked on the boot toe, it sounded solid like a turtle shell. “There’s metal inside so my foot won’t get hurt when something heavy falls on it. Try to smash it.”

Star Swirl tilted his head to the side and gently kicked the toe with a hoof. When it didn’t give, he kicked harder, and then tried standing on it. The shoe stood firm. “Remarkable. You have soft feet, so you made yourself a hoof. Do you have more of these where you come from?”

He had only meant to ask that one question, but it only reminded him how hungry he was for knowledge and one question soon more questions piling atop each other. “For that matter, where are you from? Where else have you been? Why did you not stay there? Did something chase you out? What could possibly be bad enough to chase out a human? Is there really no magic at all in your land? Is there grass?”

Star Swirl put all of his weight on boots as he leaned in closer with each new question. The human wondered what would happen when he ran out of boot to stand on. 

“How can grass grow when there are no earth ponies to grow it? And how can you wrap up winter without magic? Oh! Perhaps you don’t even have a winter at all? You know, I once heard from a storyteller humans travel in rolling boxes of metal where it is always the same temperature and live where they can decide when it is light or dark or dim and water comes from the walls, and even the water can be hot or cold depending on the whims of who called it. Just as if it had come from the arctic or a hot spring!”

The human pressed against the maple trunk as the unicorn and his bottomless questions edged in closer. His front hooves clambered over the human’s bony knees as Star Swirl awkwardly balanced his hind legs on rounded boot toes. A blue velvety nose was inches from his.

“I saw the water in your bottle, did it come from one of those walls? Are the walls made of metal? I have to ask, for I’ve heard many different opinions on the subject — some say that your walls are made of stone or wood just like our houses but many others say you live in walls made from glass. Glass!”

The rough bark was digging into the human’s skin. He watched a starling hop along the branch he was sitting on earlier, wishing he’d stayed up where unicorns couldn’t clamor all over him. Could little ponies climb? He hoped not.

“But why would someone live in a house with glass walls? Everypony could see everything one did and wouldn’t the whole house simply break apart if there was a hailstorm or somepony threw a rock? It doesn’t seem practical.” Star Swirl tilted his head to the side, a bit of pink mane falling across his eye and brushing against the human’s cheek. “Hmm. Do you know why one would decide to live in a place with glass walls?” 

The human waited for another interrogation tidal wave to hit him again but the only sound was Star Swirl catching his breath, which had the odd scent of oats and apricots. After a few heartbeats of welcome silence, the man gave a nervous smile. “Are you done?”

“No”, gasped the pony between breaths, “But I cannot recall what the rest are just this moment. I can think of a few more if you like.”

“That… won’t be necessary, thank you.” He took Star Swirl’s hooves in his hands and nudged him aside to stand up. The pony twitched his ears, backing away with a sheepish smile and awkward apology on his lips.

Now with some welcome distance between them the human answered, “I’m not sure what all of those questions mean but I can tell you for certain there is no magic in my city. I don’t know what grass would have to do with magic but yes, there was plenty of grass and trees and flowers that grew next to the sidewalk. There were a few vegetables in the garden, but I don’t know if any have survived now without anyone to tend them.”

Star Swirl pricked his ears and smiled at mention of the garden. “And what is a sidewalk?”

“Walkways made of white stone, though now they’re more greyish tan than white. They ran next to the asphalt roads that cut through the city like a stream and that way you could walk safely without being run over.” He tapped his pack with a foot. “My water comes from the river and rainfall, same as you. I’ve never seen water come from a wall before. I found some bottles that already had drinkable water inside them, so maybe that water came from walls since it tasted a bit different. There is winter. Unfortunately.”

“What of the boxes and towers? Could you not simply change the temperatures in them?”

The human shrugged. “In the buildings? Not anymore. There is a way to play with the wires to make the heat turn on but I never got the chance to learn how. Cities only work that way when there are lots of people living in it to make everything work properly and there aren’t any of those. The buildings are made of lots of things. Some are made of wood or bricks and most of the towers were made of metal and glass, although most of the glass broke a long time ago. Some buildings still have a special sort of glass in them that’s very strong and almost impossible to break but I don’t know why.”

Star Swirl closed his eyes and digested the answers slowly, as if unaccustomed to such rich fare. “This city of yours, did it have a name?”

“I’m sure it did but I never found out what it was. There were plenty of signs labeling streets and buildings and things but I don’t think I ever found something naming the city itself. I never thought much about it, there wasn’t a need to call it anything else besides the city. Names are used to tell the difference between one thing and another and it is the only city I’ve known.”

The pony back sat on his haunches like a cat, which seemed strange for a creature with hooves. The position looked like it ought to be uncomfortable. But then again, there were many things about Star Swirl that were a bit uncomfortable.

The human hoped his answers were enough to stave off the unicorn for a while. These questions had a strange way of seeping into his pores and rubbing against him in ways he didn’t like at all.

“If your lone city did not have a name, then do you have one?”

Questions like that for example.

“Yes,” the human told him, sounding more nonchalant than he actually was.

When Star Swirl looked at him expectantly with his beard fluttering in the breeze the human put his hands in his pockets and said nothing.

“Well?”

The human leaned against the maple and studied little veins in the leaves. “Well what?”

“What are you called?”

“As I understand it, I am called the contradiction creature. You ought to know that already.”

“No, I mean what are you called? You, specifically.”

“I am not called anything now, for I have none to call for me.”

Star Swirl flicked his tail in frustration. “Then what did others of your kind call you before?”

“I have known very few of my kind. One called me ‘the kid’, the other called me ‘son’. When feeling more affectionate she sometimes called me ‘annoying’.”

Star Swirl leaned back and sighed so hard his bell jingled. “But you do have a name. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Can you — no, I know this trick — will you tell me what it is?”

The human pushed his hands deeper in his pockets. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s mine.” He may as well have been talking to clouds or squirrels for all the courtesy he gave. “And giving it away is a fine way to run into trouble. Especially dealing with magic things. Don’t know what’s to be done with a name once it’s given away, but it cannot be anything good.”

There was a short pause. “Do you really think I would do you harm?” The pony’s voice wilted as if it had been stomped on. “I stayed as you let the manticore out. I set you free. Is that not enough to trust me?”

The man looked down at Star Swirl’s drooping ears, then at the thorn scars etched along his mouth. “I do trust you. But you want something I am not ready to give.” He reached down and brushed some pink mane from the pony’s eyes. It felt springy and thick and seemed overdue for a haircut. If haircuts were a thing ponies did. “I do owe you something and I would give you something else if I could but I don’t have the tools nor the time to craft anything worthwhile. Unless you’re looking for a hunting knife or some thread I don’t carry anything else to spare that you would want.”

“’Tisn’t as if I could threaten you with magics even if I wanted.” There was a quiet touch of bitterness in his voice but Star Swirl quickly swallowed and buried it under another question. “Where will you go now?”

“I’m not sure.” He drummed his fingers against the tree in thought. “Do you know where I could find a… Yarak? Pyrite spoke of a General Yarak that was somehow connected to a White Roc. I suppose I’m going where they are to learn whatever they know.” He looked at the unicorn, and then looked up into the branches again. There were little streaks and flashes of blue between the glittering leaves and a long trail of wispy clouds that reminded him of tire tracks. “Have you seen others like me, Star Swirl?”

The pony shook his head, “The closest I have come before now was the tapestry in the great hall of House Galaxy, some wood prints in the mythology archives, and a bronze statue in the King’s courtyard. You are the first and only human I’ve seen. I once heard tell of a unicorn that saw a human, but that mare was old enough to be my grandmother and I was but a small colt. Sorry.”

“I didn’t think so. It was worth asking, anyway.”

“General Yarak lies in the northeast, though I don’t know how you plan to reach him, unless humans can sprout wings.” When the human wrinkled his brow in confusion Star Swirl explained, “The pegasus tribe lives in the clouds. They are the ponies with wings who craft the weather.”

This only confused him further. “They… craft the weather?”

“Well, of course,” laughed Star Swirl. “Where else could clouds come from? It isn’t as if they clouds could form by themselves or rain fall on its own.”

“It did in the city.”

“All by itself? Are you quite sure you just didn’t notice a pony with wings arranging a thunderhead or moving a snow cloud?”

“I told you before, until a few months ago I had never seen a pony at all. In the sky or otherwise.”

“If there could be no magic in a human’s city… well yes, I suppose that makes sense. If it rained at all, it couldn’t be by pegasus magic, could it?” A little smile brimming with curiosity crept on Star Swirl’s face. “So the only rain you could have gotten must have been free-falling. I suppose snow and wind and clouds move on their own as well? Rain that falls by itself! Astounding.”

“I guess.” The human flipped his pack over his shoulder and began to move away before he could be sucked into another vortex of questions. “Thank you anyway for the help, Star Swirl. Farewell to you.”

He hadn’t gone five steps before a voice piped up behind him. “Wait!” The human looked back to find Star Swirl trailing behind. His hooves made not a sound as he walked, tentative and taut as if stepping on cracks of thin ice in a land of avalanches. The unicorn approached him as he had the manticore cage, keeping a respectful distance but longing to come closer. Amazed at his own boldness, he said, “I know what you can grant me.”

The contradiction creature eyed him warily. His eye darted between the unicorn and the road rolling out into the distance, as if measuring the likelihood of outrunning a pony. “…What is it?”

“Take me with you.”

The human frowned and grasped the strap of his pack with both hands. He still looked as if he could bolt any second. Star Swirl gave a gentle, hopeful smile. “Unicorns are good luck,” he offered. “And good company too, as a famous mare once said.”

“Um. I don’t mean to offend but the first unicorn I met was not what I would call lucky.”

“Perhaps, but it was through that unicorn you learned the Roc flies with General Yarak, there’s a sort of fortune in that. You have a point, though: not everypony you could meet will be on kind ground, assuming they recognize you at all. This is no Dream Valley and the world is full of hard hearts and cold eyes. You might welcome a friendly soul by your side and while I am no map maker I know the unicorn territory and the lands on its border fairly well. At least I know it a little more than you do, if you don’t mind my saying. I can help find us lodging and ask directions. And I think it will be good for both of us in the future, somehow. I… I have a ken for these sorts of things. Please, take me with you.”

The human looked at Star Swirl’s lively colors, then at the brass bell shining at the base of his neck. Everything with ears would hear them coming and remember them after they left. He wasn’t sure what that would mean for them when they went amongst the other little ponies but he was sure it would make for rough hunting. But the bearded fellow did seem to know the land, which was always useful. The human wasn’t sure if he enjoyed having a unicorn’s company or not. But he didn’t think he was ready to turn him away either.

“You can come if you like.”

Star Swirl lept forward in a flare of silk cape and excited jingles. He meant to approach in a dignified canter but it somehow ended up as more of a lamb-like prance. “You shan’t regret it.”

The man looked down at the beaming little fellow and suppressed a smile of his own. “Aren’t you supposed to be afraid of me or something?”

“Probably. Aren’t you supposed to be extinct?”

This time the human did smile.

Star Swirl was a hardier creature than the human expected. Despite looking sort of like a colorful horned throw pillow stuffed with too many questions, he kept up easily. He was never far from his side, catching up in eager canters when the human moved into brisk walks and strolling behind evenly as they ambled over rolling hills.

He was quieter than expected, too. In the two days they had traveled together Star Swirl spoke as much as the human did, which was hardly at all. Every now and then he would remark on a notable rock formation or sing a little song to himself, but he mostly kept to himself as they traveled. The human sometimes wondered if Star Swirl had simply worn himself out after his waterfall of inquiries or if he was simply shy of speaking after the effort of convincing the human to take him along. He was often lost in thought with something was on his mind or on the tip of his tongue, but would not voice it and the human did not ask about it.

On the third morning of the fourth week of their travels together Star Swirl was awoken by a shrill scream in the distance. He craned his neck up towards the willow branch where the human had curled up the night before. The boots and knapsack were gone but he’d left something behind as a sign he would return.

Star Swirl was grateful the pegasi scheduled a warm summer this year. That meant the thing was kept in the pack and out of sight for most of the day. It came out at nightfall to be used as a blanket, but the mercy of the dark made it seem no different than any other bit of cloth. The pitiless morning offered no such comfort. The human’s cloak draped over the willow branch like a broken bat wing just inches above where the unicorn had slept moments before. A breeze tousled Star Swirl’s cape, his bell rang happily as silk flared and snapped at his sides. The dangling cloak tips gently waved at him, hardly disturbed at all. Whatever material it was made from was too heavy to be blown away; it had to be something heavy like wool or velvet. Or something else.

His ears pricked at the sound of something crunching under a heavy foot, and his nose twitched at the smell of smoke. There was another shriek, but the sound cut off as swiftly as it started.

In a different company a morning that began with screams and smoke would be alarming. Instead it only affirmed the human did not have to go far to find breakfast. At least he did this sort of thing out of sight. The unicorn suppressed a shudder and made his way to the stream for a drink.

It wasn’t the meat eating that troubled him. Star Swirl had worked under Pyrite for three years, after all. In the constant company of wolves, weasels, and bears, one eventually became used to the idea of bleeding flesh and teeth cracking bones. But the company of a wolf and the company of a contradiction creature was not the same thing. Not at all.

At the sound of approaching boots he edged aside to give the space as the human knelt beside him on the bank to refill his strange clear bottles. They nodded good morning to each other. Star Swirl shook water from his dripping beard and offered a thin smile. "So. Um. Aside from nuts and berries and fruits what else do you eat?"

"At home it was mostly ducks and pigeons. These days I just eat whatever I can catch." The human shrugged, "Mostly it's squirrels and rabbits when I can manage to catch them. Sometimes I fish, but fishing takes more time than I would like. I can make do with almost anything, assuming it isn't poisonous."

Star Swirl eyed the hare feet sticking out of the top of the human's pack. The feet waggled and bounced in a macabre little jig as he moved. The toes were tinged red. 

The human sat back on his heels and washed the blood from his knife, humming a little song to himself. Without looking back at the unicorn he said, "No, I don't eat ponies.”

“Oh, but I didn’t think… That is, I didn’t mean to imply—”

“I try to avoid eating things that talk.” The human smirked. “And you talk a great amount."

The unicorn gingerly smiled back but it withered as he watched the human return to the willow tree to retrieve his cloak made from… Well, Star Swirl was happier not knowing.

He waited until it was safely put away before he approached the human again and they continued down the road.

A covered wagon pulled by a team of burly earth ponies thundered past them, obscured by clouds of grit and dust.

“Second one today,” the human observed. “And the day isn’t even half over.”

Similar small signals of civilization had become more and more common lately. Abandoned carts without wheels, hoof prints running over hoof prints in the dirt, forgotten horseshoes in the grass, candlelight from lonely cottages in the distance.

The dirt path split as it climbed to the hilltop where a white signpost perched waiting for them, its wooden arrows splayed out like open arms. An odd language of hard edged letters the human couldn’t read scrawled across it, along with simple drawings of fruit and houses. Star Swirl looked at it and grinned. “Ah, we’re right on track, Conemara is only a few miles ahead. Look, from here you can see some of it already.”

The human looked in the distance at the cluster of rooftops all colored in cheerful reds, pearly pinks, and buttery yellows in a valley of vibrant grass, pretty little pebbles at the bottom a shallow green bowl. Streaks of grey ran through the valley in intricate patterns, branching out and around in ragged zigzags, smooth curls, and straight edges and it made the human homesick for his own empty roads. 

“It’s a town of earth ponies near the Nation’s border. We ought to be there well before nightfall for some lodging. Feels like ages since I’ve slept in a proper bed.” 

“Is there anything to eat there?”

Star Swirl gave a warm little chuckle. “If not in Conemara then nowhere at all. Tis the main hub of trade with the Kingdom in the way of luxury goods, ice creams, cakes, and the like. Those twisting roads down there are so intricate to keep ponies from stepping on the grass. Finest grass you’ll find anywhere. They say it’s so soft and lush the quilt makers cry themselves to sleep in fits of jealousy.”

The human frowned. “I don’t eat grass.”

“Ha! Expensive as Conemara grass is? Neither do I. But in any town with earth ponies you’re bound to find plenty besides to eat. They know the ways of their land and the harvest and food the same as unicorns know their moon phases and pegasi know cloud patterns.”

"Speaking of the clouds, what do you know of the White Roc?” The human glanced at the sky stretching above him, pale blue and barren. “I always thought rocs lived in hotter places of sand and grasslands, feasting upon elephants and fighting crocodiles. What could it be doing this far north? And what’s it to do with General Yarak?"

Star Swirl thought a few moments before answering, “The three pony tribes do not go amongst each other, save for when we exchange goods and services. Many unicorns go their whole lives never meeting a pony without a horn and are more than glad for it. Keep this in mind when I tell you that most all ponies know the name of the fearsome General Yarak. Details are a mite obscure in exactly how, but t’was through him the griffon wars were won. In the latter years of the war the Hegemony fractured against the force of the griffon army; they conquered most of the northern cities and encroached further by the day. It was to the point where the shadow of red talons was a common sight in Nation skies and any unicorn with a telescope could see the sun glinting off armor.”

It was literally all downhill from here. Star Swirl often dashed ahead quicker than his hooves could manage, often tripping as the road grew steep. The human went carefully behind him for fear of slipping. Were it snowing, the two of them could have easily sledded into Conemara and saved half a day’s walk. 

“But as the griffons pushed forward, Yarak’s company moved backward into the northern aeries in the heart of griffon territory. Some say he blazed through the infantries and straight into the Emperor’s court in endless waves of blood and feathers, fueled only by righteous white-hot fury and the iron taste of blood in his mouth. Other says Yarak simply went the wrong way. The end is the same either way. In a month—one month in an eight year war—the Emperor was slain and the enemy devastated in their own land. Not only did the Hegemony win back their lands, but claimed a good hundred miles of griffon land for themselves too.”

“That’s all very interesting,” sighed the man not looking for a history lesson. “But what about the Roc?”

Star Swirl waggled conspiratorial pink eyebrows. “Ah, but how did general claimed victory so suddenly? Griffons are not easily slain, to cut down a mass of them with such swiftness would call for something unheard of, something huge.” The unicorn swished his cape and hid his nose in the shadow of silk and secrets. “A secret weapon so terrible, so immensely—”

The human jostled the bag against his shoulder, pointedly unimpressed. “The weapon was the White Roc.”

“The White Roc indeed!” If the unicorn noticed the human’s irritation then he didn’t show it. “I can’t tell you much of the Roc in the ways of fact. There are scores of stories and songs and poetry and so many of them contradict each other. I have often heard the Roc is a pale phantom crafted from souls of the vengeful dead and I have also heard that the army bore the Roc’s egg in a secret keep, raising it on minotaur hearts and elephant bones. Wilder stories say the White Roc is a mechanical creature, all twirling cogs and smoke clouds, Yarak is the Roc’s father, Yarak tricked the Roc into slavery, or the Roc is General Yarak himself under a curse. Popular opinion in the capitol says the Roc is not real at all, just a simple metaphor for the army or else a rumor they made up to frighten the other tribes. I suppose we will discover the truth of the Roc when we come to it.”

The human looked again at the empty sky and rubbed his shoulder. "I'd hate to think I've come all this way in search of a metaphor." Half-expecting a shadow to suddenly loom overhead, he found himself missing the shelter of tree branches as the pair eased into the heart of the valley.


	6. The Old World, The New World and The Stargazer's Ape

They came to Conemara in the late afternoon, as the sun prepared to duck behind the hills. At the city gates daily shipments rolled in beside them in clattering, rattling wagons. Occasionally, reedy messengers blew past them in colorful blurs, clipping street corners and leaping over shoppers, spurred by the promise of a handsome reward. The human saw the rushing ponies, wondering if he and the unicorn should walk faster to avoid becoming trampled. It soon became clear, however, that in Conemara the fleet-footed were an anomaly.

It was a healthy hamlet, just a smidge too big to be a town and a pinch short of being a true city, contentedly curled in the soft hills wealthy in life and lush grasses none dared walk upon. The dirt paths and cobblestone walkways were wide and welcoming and bursting at the seams. Clusters of little ponies gathered hungrily around little brick shops where sweet smells wafted from sills and chimneys, and moseyed on cobblestones with their carts and cattle and gossip clogging the arteries of the street. Wayfarers bumped into one another with mumbled apologies and dipped hats, while the citizens tightly squeezed past each other with easy smiles.

The human edged closer to Star Swirl to make room for a stallion and his train of Jersey cows. Fidgeting, he hooked a finger under the unicorn’s cape and gasped it like a silken tether. He recalled how the little group of unicorns around the thorn cage unnerved him with their numbers and he almost laughed to himself; that was a paltry handful compared to the massive herd he navigated now. Conemara sort of reminded him of the city he left behind, but of course it wasn’t. It was a warped reflection of the human’s city; it was shorter, it was fatter, its bones were made of wood instead of iron, topped by thatched roofs and shining tiles. The windows were clear and unbroken, the signposts freshly painted, the walls unmarred by the scrawling graffiti of dead wordsmiths. It was alive and it lived so well it could afford to be slow, soft, and easy.

_A city is not supposed to be this way_ , he thought.

The human knew cities. He knew them better than he knew the scars on his skin. He knew _his_  city where he never got lost, where his fellow citizens were bony coyotes hiding under truck cabins, cats lurking in rafters, and pigeons roosting atop darkened street lights. Where the wind blew through what used to be walls, where the only voice was his echo in the tunnels.

_A city is not supposed to be this_. But even as the human thought this, a deeper, quieter part in him whispered _You know better. This is what a_ true _city looks like. A city’s heart beats with a million footsteps, speaks with ten million voices telling stories in their storeys. And you know that._

Plump, stout Conemara with its lush grasses and skipping milkmares had every right to call itself a city, much more than the human’s dead city did. A place of ponies built by ponies, for ponies, and no other. In the overlapping conversations and clip-clop hooves on cobblestone it told him what he already knew. This world did not know him, it did not belong to him anymore.

The human gripped Star Swirl’s cape a little tighter. The unicorn glanced back at him with concerned eyes. “You might want to give your rein some slack and let out that breath you’re holding.” In the rumbling streets it was a strain to hear him. “It’s a bit tight here, but nopony’s looking at you, there’s no need to worry.”

He was right, of course. At a brisk pace they moved along faster than most of the little ponies placidly ambling around them. None were in any sort of rush, they had all the time in the world to joke and gossip and complain as they pulled their livelihoods with them in baskets and little carts. A few ponies resting on long benches brought their heads up to watch them pass, but their eyes were usually focused on Star Swirl.

It was then the human noticed that almost all that went by them were earth ponies. All excepting a trio of unicorns who stood off by themselves. The earth ponies gave them a wide berth as the unicorns whispered amongst themselves, studying a bit of parchment held magically in midair. It was almost as if there were an invisible rope between them and the rest of Conemara. When a mare holding a basket of herbs stepped into the invisible barrier to speak to them, the unicorns all gave her a sort of side-eyed scowl and did not answer. The mare dropped her eyes and shuffled away.

As the traveling pair passed them the human felt Star Swirl’s muscles tense. For a short moment, they all looked at each other before Star Swirl averted his eyes and pretended to ignore the whispers fluttering amongst the trio.

“Do you know them?” the human asked.

“Not exactly. They know of me, though.” Star Swirl cleared his throat and searched the area for a change of subject. “I believe we’ve come out of the shopping district by now. Look, the crowds are thinning.”

The human and the unicorn came to a place in town where the stout buildings had more elbow room, the pastures spread out as if each barn and bungalow wore sprawling capes of grass. There had been plenty of inns in the shopping district but Star Swirl had ignored them entirely, for they were deemed either too crowded or expensive. The residential district did not seem any better. They passed five inns, two hostels, three bed-and-breakfasts, and a boarding house but none of them suitable to sleep in. Some required a tall expense Star Swirl could not afford, while others had no vacancies (though the human could have sworn there had been empty rooms).

The lamplighters were out balancing upon step-stools with their candles when the travelers came to a split-level brick house painted in merry pinks and whites. A shiny brass gate ran across the perimeter, tall enough to keep the riffraff out when the gate was closed, but not tall enough to seem unwelcoming. If not for Star Swirl’s insistence they open the gate and walk in like civilized creatures, the human could have hopped the fence easily.

The unicorn frowned at the front lawn, enormous compared to the other yards and most other houses had no lawn in front at all. He sulked at the front door’s fresh coat of paint and gleaming doorknob. He scowled at the lacy mountain of pillows stacked upon the foyer’s couch as if a lace pillow slaughtered his mother.

“So what is the matter with _this_  one?” asked the human.

Star Swirl’s nose twitched at the smell of roses and freshly baked bread. “Nothing is wrong with it. It’s lovely. I couldn’t imagine a nicer hotel, so there is no way I can afford it. But no harm in trying, I suppose.” He rang the cowbell hanging by the front desk, waited a few moments in silence, then rang twice more.

On the third ring, a mare waddled in from the back room dressed in a high-collared jacket adorned with a little broach in the shape of a pie in the lapel, dragging along a scroll of parchment. Her coat shone with health; it was the color of overripe raspberries and overpowered the subtler hues around her. Fluffy buttermilk curls spilled over her shoulders and bounced with each step.

 “Here, what’s all this din and dither this hour of the night? Pecan Pie, that had better not be you again, I already told you, you have to pay your fine befor—Oh!” Upon seeing a unicorn up front she blinked in surprise and took a moment to readjust herself. “Oh, good evening! So sorry, I almost mistook you for somepony else, we usually don’t get, er, your sort of company at this hour. What’s the trouble, sir?”

Star Swirl seemed equally surprised, though his voice was too weary to show it. “Oh, dear. I knew something about this house was too good to be true. Pray pardon, Miss Mayor. Lickety Split the… fifth, is it?”

 “Sixth,” she said. Her eyes darted between the pink beard and the starry mark on Star Swirl’s flank barely exposed through a fold of silk. The mare gave a little jolt as if picked by a pin. Her voice climbed an octave, a rigid smile overtook her face. “And it’s no trouble at all, I assure you!”  

“I—or, we—were just looking for an affordable place to spend the night. I’d no idea this was your house, by the size of it I presumed… well, never mind it, we’ll just be on our way.”

“NONsense! Why, you look just about ready to collapse, dear. Must have been a long way for a young fellow, I expect, but there’s no need for worry. You can set your bones down here in our house.”

“But I wouldn’t want to troub—”

“No trouble at all, lad! Why, our fair little city has always welcomed guests from beyond the Earth Pony Nation. The only thing more famous than Conemara’s hospitality is the grass. Have you tried the grass? Lovely this time of year, it is. And you know what they say: ‘No burgh, nor hamlet, nor stone riviera may surpass the cordial of sweet Conemara’.”

The human moved in for a closer look. He had to lean over to see all of her, she was scarcely taller than the counter she stood behind, but her towering influence seemed to make up for it. Mayor Lickety Split beamed up at them with a short, rounded face that reminded him more of a tiny hippo than a pony. The human marveled at her size; how her ribs were safely insulated and cushioned behind rolls of flesh, how he couldn’t see her cheekbones at all.

        Had there ever been a night she went to bed hungry? She or any other pony in this plump city? The thought brought pangs of either jealousy or hunger, he couldn’t tell which. Star Swirl was right about Conemara’s wealth if they all kept so well-fed and warm in the winter. He looked at the mayor’s brittle smile with a touch of confusion. So then why did she look like a rabbit in a snare right now? What was there left to fear amongst all this comfort?

Star Swirl looked about the room and shrugged with a little sigh. If there was a warm bed in it for him, he wasn’t about to argue. “Truly, it isn’t necessary, but if you insist…”

Lickety Split VI nodded, satisfied. “All settled snuggly, then. Though of course there is the matter of—”

“Payment,” finished a new voice. None of them had noticed the honey colored mare until she had spoken, though the human had no idea how he could have missed her. She was the average size for a pony but gaunt for a Conemaran, and the lacy blue bonnet upon her head did nothing to soften her appearance. A head taller than the mayor and leagues harder, she stared at Star Swirl like he’d stolen something. “There is still the matter of payment, little stargazer. I hope you have coin this time.”

The mayor let out a high-pitched, near hysteric giggle, “Oh! Um, this is Honey Glaze, she helps me some with the baking and the… the um, things in…matters. Sugar, say _hello_  to our _guest_  from out of town.”  

The honey mare leaned across the counter to whisper something in the mayor’s ear. Lickety Split looked at her, then at the mildly confused Star Swirl. “Oh. So you mean he’s not…?”

“Nothing of the sort. He was here two years before, don’t you recall? He told Sorbet’s fortune and juggled cherries badly.”

Mayor Lickety Split VI heaved a sigh of relief, all of her slumped like a collapsed soufflé. “Ahhh, I see it now. You’re the bearded fellow from the carnival, with all the long toothed nasties. Heh, didn’t recognize you without the wagons and star charts.” The grin returned, this time with the loose warmth of a natural smile. “What happened, son? You run away from the circus to join a home? Your boss finally decide to retire?”

Star Swirl rubbed a hoof behind his neck. “Something like that. This doesn’t change anything, does it? The Showmaster left me plenty of bits to live on, I was always prepared to pay for our beds.”

“Glad to hear it. But who else are you with?”

The unicorn offered a hooffull of bits, gesturing to the human, just coming short of touching him. “My yeti,” he explained. “I never like to be apart from him too long, he’s a touch ill, as you can see. We’re headed to see a specialist up north. I promise he won’t make a mess of the room.”

Lickety Split nosed through the coins. “This will do for a night, I suppose. It’s less than it ought to be for bed and food, but since I like you, it’ll do. But no animals indoors. ‘Specially not sick ones.” She nodded to the window where a beagle stared intently at them through the shutter slats. “Even Pete sleeps outdoors, and I love him like kin. Your bald yeti is welcome to sleep in the yard, so long’s he don’t bother Maybelle.”

Before Star Swirl could argue further the mayor yawned and made for the back room. “I’m to bed, Honey can see to settling you in. Try not to keep her too long.”

Star Swirl scrunched his nose. “Is the barn really the best you can do?”

“It’s either sleeping in the stalls with Maybelle or in the yard with Pete.” Honey Glaze was hardly minding the unicorn. She brushed a brown forelock from her eyes and peered up at the human, humming like a beehive. “Just what is that old cob doing to his acts nowadays? Shearing them like sheep instead of sharpening canines?”

In a syrupy voice one normally reserves for toddlers or wiggling kittens she cooed, “Well hey there, little fellow. How are we today? You’re a sweetie, I’ll bet.”

The human sighed, disappointed but not very surprised. He offered a small wave hello.

Honey Glaze smiled at that and took a step closer. Her smile shrank an inch and she leaned in to examine his hand, adjusting the little round glasses on her nose. “Sir stargazer.” Her voice hardened faster than neglected gingerbread. “If he is a yeti, then why is his fur so dark?”

“Oh, well, it’s not wintertime, miss,” Star Swirl happily explained. “No use for thick white fur without snow to hide in, so he switches the hue of his hair just like a hare.”

 “Skin does not change color with the seasons.”

The unicorn buckled his shoulders in a weary slump and sighed as if this were the sixtieth time he had explained all of this. “The yeti has dark skin underneath its fur so that it may absorb more sunlight to keep warm. Not unlike arctic bears.”

Honey Glaze’s eyes narrowed into blue slits. “Polar bears are black underneath, not brown. And this fellow here is not even the dark sable of pumpernickel; color looks closer to a gingersnap if you ask me. Not much to absorb the sun. And why do the paw pads look a different color and why are they so thin?”

Star Swirl flicked an anxious ear and desperately looked to the human for help, but all he received was a shrug. After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence as the cover story melted around him, he gave an obstinate little snort and huffed, “Oh, what would a baker know of yetis, anyway?”

The honey mare dusted a bit of flour off her shoulder. “Well, it’s an interesting thing about Conemara. Many of us work food, but there are other things that need doing too. My dearest Split is the Mayor, for instance. As for me...” She pleasantly smiled at Star Swirl with all of her teeth. “I’m the city veterinarian.”

“…oh.”

“I can also tell you that yetis have longer claws, bigger broader noses, and feet the length of palm leaves, not to mention they are far too tall to fit into a split level house.” She brought down her hoof as a knight brings down his sword. “This,” said Honey Glaze “Is _not_  a yeti. This is _obviously_  a young sasquatch. And an ill kept one at that.”

“Oh? Oh! Well, you don’t say? Hmm.”

“Some zookeeper, doesn’t even know what animals he has. Can’t say as I’m surprised, he looks nothing like he ought.” The mare gently prodded the human’s knee cap. “Here, when was the last time you fed the poor thing? He’s almost as thin as your manticore. Wouldn’t be surprised if the fur just fell out from malnutrition, I wouldn’t. I suppose you were trying to pass him off as a… a wood elf or somesuch.”

Star Swirl sighed, tired, defeated, and in want of a bed. “You caught me, miss. Yes, a thin one he is, but I’ve no precedence on what the owner does or wants. The carnival’s not retired, I’ve actually stolen away with the final act in tow. He is in my care by ill gain but not for ill purpose. I couldn’t bear to leave him where he was, and I can’t let him go either, miss. Been raised tame.”

Honey Glaze yielded at the stargazer’s surrender and her sweet smile was back again. “There, now. Doesn’t it feel better to be truthful?”

“Oh, it’s a weight off my shoulders, let me tell you.”

 

* * *

 

Star Swirl may have disapproved of the human sleeping in barns, but the human certainly did not. The wide openness of closed space relaxed his muscles, the clogged arteries of Conemara streets with its constant chatter seemed miles away. An aged building of long width and tall rafters, he welcomed it like an old friend.  It was still a place owned by ponies, but the evidence of it was sparse enough for him to forget that uncomfortable detail.

 

The barn was dimly lit by three fireflies listlessly hovering near the rafters and the place had the soft, comforting scent of hay and old hickory wood. The human smelled something else too, something sweet and fresh and comforting that put him in the mind of new leaves in a drizzle. He followed the scent to the only occupied stall, where a Jersey cow—Maybelle, presumably—had her dark nose in a pile of grass. She brought her head up and stared at him with more aptitude than he expected from a cow. It looked almost…grouchy. The grass in her manger was a vibrant green even in dim light. Curious, the human took some and rubbed the thin, wispy blades between his fingers. It felt closer to feather down or the fur of baby rabbits than grass.

“Uh. _Excuse_  you.”

The human nearly jumped out of his skin. Apparently it wasn’t just ponies that talked.

“I don’t think anyone said you could root your weird little paws through my dinner,” the cow groused. “This is expensive, you know. We work too hard growing this grass for it to be poked at by a… whatever you are.”

“I’m a man,” said the man.

 “Never heard of you.” Maybelle sniffed and turned her back on him to eat in peace. The human shrugged and went on exploring the barn with the decision to sleep in a stall far from the cow’s.

A wooden tub of water sat at the far end of the barn, presumably for bathing. It was a strange arrangement for bathing, as the bottom was lined with what looked like oats (was this a bath or a breakfast?) and the water was warm. He gave himself a short wash, paying special attention to the thorn scrapes on his back and to his hair, grimy from sweat, dust, and other symptoms of travel. The water had a pleasant effect on his spirits, the sting of homesickness ebbed into the dull ache of nostalgia.

It was then the human noticed something hanging above the barn door. A pair of horseshoes linked together over a knothole and some cobwebs. It was the first time he had ever seen iron that bent to serve ponies. A small reminder of who actually owned this barn and the world outside of it.

He brushed a hand through his freshly washed hair, turned his eyes to the shadows in the rafters, and sighed. There was something he had to do.

 

* * *

 

Star Swirl arrived later that night carrying a wicker basket, a lantern, and a downy pillow. He seemed surprised to find the human curled in the corner of the stall in a bed of straw, perfectly content and wrapped in his cloak. "I came to see if I could make you more comfortable, but I see you've done that yourself."

"I told you I'd be alright. It's a very nice barn. Clean, empty and quiet, I couldn't ask for more than that. But thank you anyway." The human fluffed the pillow, put it behind his head and patted the empty hay next to him. "It sort of reminds me of where I used to live. Sort of."

Star Swirl entered carefully, tiptoeing around the outstretched leather cloak as if it were made of faulty wires glazed with kerosene and he carried a torch. His hooves did a strange hopscotch dance on the hay until he found a suitable place in the straw to sit. Unicorns were certainly picky about their living conditions. "I thought humans from the city hated things like barns and only liked tall, tight spaces. Is that not why you always sleep in the trees?"

"I sleep in trees because the last time I fell asleep on the ground I awoke in a cage of thorns. This is the first barn I've ever been in, but I'm used to small rooms in larger buildings. Sort of like the mall I grew up in."

"Oh," said Star Swirl. He set down the basket and lantern between them. "What is a mall?"

"A hollow building with lots and lots of rooms inside. Some rooms are the size of this stall but other rooms are twice the width of this barn. I don't know for certain what a mall was used for. I believe it was supposed to be one big shop with lots of little ones inside of it, kind of like a beehive. But I never knew for sure. Some of the bigger shops still had things inside of them."

"What sorts of things?"

"Nothing too special, mostly old signs with a bunch of random numbers written on them, many mentioned something called a 'Sale'. The place we lived in used to be a toy store, it still had lots of dolls. They were painted white, stood tall as me, and they all looked off into the distance in the strangest poses. Many of them didn't have faces, some didn't have heads at all. Others were missing their arms and legs, I even saw one that was just a torso." The human rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I don't think it was a very good toy store."

“It was a good, safe place to live, especially in winter. In the middle of the mall was a big open area with dried up fountains and one big window in the ceiling. When the leaves changed color, we brought part of the garden indoors where they’d be safe from the frost, though the vegetables grown inside never got very big. Still, it was good to have a food source in winter so we didn’t need to go out hunting all the time. One winter we figured how to make the lights and heat come on after poking at wires in the walls in the just right way. The vegetables grew well that year too, we hardly had to go outside at all! It was just like an indoor summer, except sometimes I had to scrape snow off the roof.”

"We?" Star Swirl looked up from his cake and licked a dollop of green frosting from his nose. "I thought you said you were alone in your human city and the inside weather doesn’t work anymore."

"Not always. I lived in that mall with my mother for about twelve or fourteen summers."

"I didn't know you had a mother."

The human smiled at him. "I don't know what your songs have been telling you Star Swirl, but humans don't just crawl full-grown from the mud. I take care of the city the best I can, but my mother knew more of our city than I ever did, more than I ever will.” The man pulled himself up to sit, chin resting peacefully on his knee, and he closed his eyes as if listening to distant music. “Before she got the chance to teach me more of what she knew, she got a thick cough that wouldn't go away and was gone before springtime."

Star Swirl's ears drooped and he buried his nose in the food basket, as if he would find the proper way to respond next to the milkshakes. He'd never been very good at this sort of thing. "I'm sorry," he said to the basket.

"It happens, don't worry about it." There was an underscore of laughter in his voice, amused at some secret joke. "I just wish she'd at least waited until the ground was soft and easy to dig in, but she always did want me to learn things the hard way. If I didn't know better, I'd say she did it on purpose so I'd finally know how to dig up frozen ground, because when the snow fell I always found a way to get out of it."

The human peered over Star Swirl's head into basket and sniffed at the warm sweetness inside. "Is the rest of that for me?"

"Hmm? Oh! Yes, it is. Please do try and eat most of it, I don't want the lady of the house to scold me anymore about how underfed you are."

The human paused to feel at his poking ribs before digging into the basket. It was lined full of all sorts of soft things covered in glazes, frostings, and creams, along with a side bowl of fruit and nuts. He poked at a spongy yellow foodstuff that was covered with something brown and glossy. It looked like wet mud, yet was dry and sort of sticky. With so many new, strange things to eat, it was hard to know where to start. This cache could last him at least a week back at home.

"I expect you would have liked my ma, Star Swirl." It was difficult to make out words in the crunching static of pecans and cashews in his mouth. "She knew so much about our city. Not only how to fix what was broken and how to mend wires, but how it all really used to work in the Old World days of her mother's mother. 'There are power lines in our bloodlines', as she put it. I don't know much about electricity—that's what the Old World lived on, electricity—but I know wires ran behind plaster and under asphalt as nerves run under skin. They carried information and light with them, though you never saw them do it, you only saw how it manifested. Back then all the buildings lit up and had indoor summers, and it was never dark even in the middle of the night."

Star Swirl peered at the window and wondered what such a sky would look like. If it simply looked like daytime or if the human's city had any moon or stars. "Is—was?—your city bigger than Conemara?"

"At least twice the size, I'm sure. I know that it at least takes twice the time to walk my concrete city than this thatched one. And my city's actually one of the smaller ones." The human put aside the empty bowl and thought carefully for a moment. "I can show you, if you like."

"Of course! I've heard so much of the elder structures of iron, but never seen one up close. It would be an enlightening visit if you'd have me, and there would be so much to—"

"No, I mean here. Now.” The human rooted around his pack and pulled out a book of long width and thin pages. The glossy cover was firm but pliable. It flopped in his hand like a dead eel.

Star Swirl stretched his neck as the man opened it and edged closer, either ignorant or uncaring of his hooves upon the leather cloak. “Oh!” He called out so loud the cow glared daggers at him, but he paid her no mind. “On my word, it’s like a scroll, but with many pages instead of just one. But the make of the paper is shiny, thinner than ours and yet seems stronger, harder to tear. I’d no notion humans kept archives of their own—oh, listen to my prattle. All other manner of creatures keep their histories one way or another, why not humans? Printed in fine, even lines with nary a smudge. I envy your typesetters.”

When he looked closer the unicorn’s firework smile dimmed a little. “Hm. I don’t know how to read your language.” But he instantly brightened again. “No matter. I can learn it later, I’m sure. I figured out dragon symbols, this doesn’t appear much harder. What is this one about? Is it also about malls and livewires?”

The human lifted up a smaller book with a harder cover from his other side as if he had spun knowledge from straw. A sprig of honeysuckle peeked out of the pages. “This one is about a poor man who becomes a rich man and throws big parties in an egg to win the love of a rich girl who likes fancy shirts."  

"A classic tale," Star Swirl mused, though the addition of parties inside eggs was new to him. "I suppose they live happily ever after?"

The human snapped up one of the littler cakes in two bites. "Actually, the girl kills someone with his yellow car, then he takes the blame for it. So then the man dies and the girl goes back to her old husband and forgets the whole thing ever happened."

"...And that is the end of the story?"

"That's the end."

“I see.” The unicorn decided human stories were quite bizarre indeed. “Have you any more of these? And what is a car and what manner of weapon is it?”

“These are the only books I brought with me, but at home I have at least a couple thousand.”

Star Swirl’s eyes became very wide.

“I lived in a library,” the human preened. “When I left, I had been through a third of all the books stored there. I could have read more than that, but I wasn’t sure what to do when I finished all of them, so I went slowly. As for cars...”

 The human moved back to the first book and flipped through pages of flickering black and white until there was a shock of color.

The illustration began in grey skies and led the eye down into angular grey, white, and rooftops, and then down, down until it exploded with color. Little green signs on the walkways, orange signs, black signs, grey signs upon buildings. A shiny coat of buttercup yellow. An umbrella splayed out in all the rainbow’s colors. Silver puddles. Red bricks. Dangling yellow boxes with red and green circles.

The dark road was slicked with rain and a long line of metal carriages traveled upon it. Every one of them candy wrapper bright in their shells of reds, blues, violets, golds, silvers, blacks, whites, pinks, oranges. Many had the round shapes of beetles, but others were squat, boxy, and tall. Star Swirl’s favorite was the white one that stretched out like a cat in the sun, the windows dark and mysterious. These, the human explained, were cars and they were more preferred for riding than murder weapons.

Star Swirl stared, afraid to blink, lest the text evaporate like dew or summer love. “Tis like a wood print.” He said it in a voice fit for temples, small and flushed with wonder. “A wood print, or... or a tapestry. Yet it is all so detailed and clear, as if plucked straight from the world and on a page. Ah, right you are! There ARE humans in the metal things if I look a bit harder.”

In fact, there were many more humans than the ones in cars. They came in all manner of sizes and shapes and they were _everywhere_. The little pony had not noticed them at first, distracted as he was by the colorful cars, but the more he looked the more of them he saw. They walked along the paths, in pairs or in groups —would you call it a pack or a herd?—or went along by themselves. They slept upon human sized benches, they ate their meaty lunches under trees, they peered out tiny windows of buildings that scraped the clouds, they carried bulging bags, they were pulled along by small fuzzy dogs on leashes. Their hides came in various shades of peachy beiges and earthy browns, but wore every manner of color, pattern, style, and design. From a distance they were not unlike flocks of extravagant birds.

Star Swirl often looked at the same spots two, three, five times and always found something he never noticed before. An untranslatable word upon a duck billed hat. A little box full of light. An argument between friends. A lovers’ rendezvous under an awning.

The human sipped at his drink, which had the same pinkish color of Lickety Split’s coat and topped with a fluffy, cloud-like substance and a cherry. He curled his toes and grinned like a yearling in springtime. “This is amazing.”

“Yes,” breathed the unicorn. “Yes it is.”

“No, not the picture. I mean _this_! This thing I’m drinking, it’s... it’s sweet, but it’s also tart and smooth! What is it? It’s amazing!”

“That? ‘Tis only an ice cream milkshake. Raspberry, strawberry, some sort of berry.”

Maybelle gave a look flat as an unpracticed choirgirl. “‘ _Only_ ice cream’, he says. Got some nerve.” She sniffed at the human. “And it is from Conemara. Of course it is amazing. I made it. _You’re welcome_.” And she went back to her cud chewing without another word.

“Um. In any case, if that picture looks real that’s because it is. Sort of. A captured image at a certain point of time, just as it was seen. When you have a picture like that it’s called something else, I forget what. Involves graphs. This one is from Nineteen Hundred Eighty Eight.”

“I have absolutely no idea what that means, but I will take your word for it. Were all of your cities like this?”

“Many, but not all of them. This book only mentions the big famous ones. Here’s how they look at night.”

Star Swirl bent down for a better look, his beard ran across the skyline like a pink paintbrush. “It’s full of stars. Lights everywhere. When did any of you sleep?”

The human shrugged. “When they wanted to, I suppose. A few books I read didn’t seem to favor the idea of a city. They said such a big place with people jammed up against each other made everyone meaner, somehow. I don’t really understand that, but then again, I wasn’t there.” He tapped a little cluster of high rises in the distance. “Some of these buildings are business or hotels, but this part here? That is where humans lived. Lots of little dwellings in one big dwelling that was part of a collection of dwellings. Neighbors lived on top of you, below you, across from you and on both sides. So even when it seemed like you were alone, you were never really alone.” The thought made him smile despite his loathing of crowds.  

“How far away is your Old World’s Nineteen Hundred Eighty Eight?" Star Swirl asked. "Eons or is it closer?”

“Closer than an eon. The mother of my mother’s mother saw it as a child, I hear.” He slurped up the last bits of milkshake with a satisfied hum.

“So many of you. And far marvelous still, so many in but this single city. Numbers of other cities still, all with just as many if not more...” He trailed off, staring below the pages, under the straw, beneath the stone and soil, and straight into days long gone. Then his dark eyes looked at the human. “It is not my place to ask, but...”

“Yes?”

“Where did they all go?”

The human was quiet then. He folded his legs under him and looked up at the stable’s little window filled with night.

Star Swirl flicked an apologetic ear. “As I said, it is not my place to ask. You need not answer if you prefer.”

“No. It’s not that. Can you dim the lantern a little?”

Star Swirl opened part of the lantern just a little. A quartet a fireflies lit freely into the night, drifting up and out of the window like dying embers. The human watched them go, then looked up to watch his twitching shadow lick the curves of the ceiling. In the light, it was unwise to speak of the dead. Ghosts slept in the daytime, hiding from all things loud or shining. Nobody, not even the dead, like being talked about behind their backs. They liked to sit in the contours of shadows to listen and remember how they once were. The human could grant them that small kindness at least.

The story opened as it always did. “Forgive my errors and misgivings. I only know what I have been told.” He nodded to the darkness and whoever listened inside it. Then he looked back at the lamplight. “This is how I heard it: there was an accident and then there was a war. I don’t know what sort of accident it was. Perhaps it was some misunderstanding that got out of hand or someone crossed the wrong wires. For all I know it wasn’t an accident at all and some human in the past played a joke only he found funny. Anyhow, that was the reason for the fire flowers.”

“What is a fire flower?” Star Swirl's ears swiveled and twitched excitedly. “Is it like a firework? Or literally a flower that is on fire?”

The human looked at him as if he’d forgotten the unicorn was there. This was the first time he had told this story to anyone that could talk back. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about that. “I guess it’s a little bit like fireworks. But a fire flower burns so much brighter and it is big enough to devour cities whole.” He raised his hands against the lantern light, spreading out his hands to craft a quivering silhouette upon the wall in the shape of a blossom. “From a distance that’s how they appear blooming against the sky. If there is another name for them I don’t know it.”

The man wriggled his fingers to make the shadowed petals wave as if caught in a light wind. “Those caught in the light of the flowers died so suddenly they didn’t even have time to take their shadows with them. The shadows are still there, etched upon on concrete. When my mother was small, she and my grandmother found a town rich with cans cached in shelters. The find was an amazing stroke of luck, but shadows ran across the walls of that town, frozen in mid-sprint so they left the place as they found it. It’s bad to live in a place like that.”

The human waited for Star Swirl to ask another question or give comment, but for once he was quiet.  

“That isn’t what happened to most of those in the Old World. Only a handful were caught in the light of the flowers, and added with war itself it only took the population of a large city or two. It was a short war and from what I hear it was not as bad as it could have been, whatever that means. What hurt us more was the illness. In those days, humans could go from one end of the Old World to the other in a matter of hours. They did not know it, but their sickness traveled with them.”

Star Swirl looked down at the picture of twinkling city lights. “And then came home where they all lived packed together and could spread faster.”

“It didn’t help our social skills either. That’s the version I know but there are other rumors of why we are so few. Several small civil wars, tsunamis, a volcano, the wrath of vengeful gods, sterility, a roc of white. All of them are possible but there are two I don’t believe: one says the dead climbed out of their graves to eat the living and the other says that some humans boarded starships to sail beyond the moon, leaving the rest of us behind. One is too silly to believe, the other is too awful.”

“Which one is which?”

The human shivered under an invisible wind. “I can’t decide. But even after all of that, there were plenty of humans to go around. A generation ago, my family traveled with nomads until my grandparents broke away from them to find a permanent place to live. When I was a boy we sent out messenger pigeons to others living far away to learn what was happening in the world. I still remember the protocol for raider attacks. I know how to properly greet new people to the city and how to tell if I can trust them. Last I heard our numbers dwindled but there was still a fair number of us. That was until this spring when I heard there were none of us.”

The human cracked the bones in his neck, took a cruller from the basket, and waited for a downpour of questions he had no answer for. The downpour never came. Star Swirl was quiet as an iron city. He had not been shocked into silence, for nothing the human said seemed to surprise him. He'd become fascinated or horror struck perhaps, but never surprised. Instead, he let the scope of what he’d learned settle in his stomach. The unicorn’s eyes flashed bright, busy tearing down the edifice of what he knew, yet even busier rebuilding it on the cornerstone of the human’s story—a stronger, better foundation.

Eulogies are not really meant for the dead. There is nothing the dead can get from them, only the assurance they were remembered. Eulogies are for closure and to share and appreciate what was no longer there with the one left behind. The human didn’t know what the unicorn was doing with what had been told to him, but something was being done. That was enough.

There was still something else to be answered, however. “What about yours, Star Swirl?”

The pony jumped, half expecting a ruler to smack across his hooves for daydreaming again. “Hm? What about my what now?”

“What about your kind? The Old World had a lot of things, but not magic. Not the kind I have seen. There were ponies, but none that talked. Any unicorns the books mentioned were nothing like you at all. I hardly know anything of you or why you are all suddenly here moving clouds and making milkshakes.”

“Interesting, we know plenty about you. You’re in all sorts of tapestries and scrolls and things, and not all of them take place in Dream Valley, either.” Star Swirl’s crescent smile glistened. “Our old worlds lived next door to each other, in a way. In the Whistler Records and in all the songs you were but a rainbow away. Some scholars argue the rainbow is symbolic, but anypony with an ounce of sense knows better and anyway those scholars don’t accept any version of history that doesn’t end with unicorns solving everything.”

“What do unicorns in particular have to do with it?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Star Swirl laughed. “Only the Pegasi tribe saw your Old World for themselves, for it was wide and strange and very far away. The only way a pony could get there was by strong wings and even stronger hearts. No other way to travel and you absolutely had to have both.”

“A strong heart is always useful to have,” said the human. “It keeps you moving when others would have laid down to rest.”

_“‘Where hast thou wandered?_

_Hither and yonder_

_And fairest heart t’was my_ _guide_.’” Star Swirl nodded to himself happily as he recited. “I don’t believe a human ever came to us without the help of a pegasus.”

“But why come to our world at all?”

“We needed you. Or at least we did the first time—maybe the other times as well—this was the earliest time anypony could remember. Perhaps they were some of the first ponies that ever were, or the first who had a story interesting enough to pass down. They were also the first ponies to know darkness, this I know for certain, and the Lord of Midnight Castle was the darkest thing we had ever seen. In fact, he was the darkest thing we would _ever_  see, for nothing so awful has been seen since that day, though plenty tried to best his legacy.”

“I still don’t see why they would seek out a human,” said the human. “Couldn’t they have used a dragon or a griffon? You still had those, right?”

All of Star Swirl’s muscles tensed and he leaned in close. The light in his eyes shook with the wild delight of the freshly minted idea, in putting something in the world that had never been there before. Star Swirl’s front hooves gently pattered out a rhythm. He seemed ready to snatch up his idea and literally run with it.

“That’s just the thing! She _wasn’t_  sought out! The first pegasus that crossed the rainbow knew not where she was going or whom she was seeking but when her eyes fell upon the human with the long yellow mane she _knew_. She just knew. And she was right. See, this is exactly it! This is exactly what I have been trying to explain to everypony: the Rainbow never takes you where you want to go, but where you need to be. See, that rainbow bridging the world was different; not hoof-crafted from water and air and light, it was... well, it was different! ”

The human let Star Swirl have a minute to himself, for there seemed to be too much happening within him at once to sort out. Then he asked, “Did other humans come to you, or was it the one with yellow hair every time?”

“Can I get there by Rainbow’s Light?” the unicorn recited. “Yes, there and back again.”

“Is that a yes?”

“It is.” Star Swirl suppressed the urge to swing into more reeling ballads and his quiet revolution of revelations. “Where was... Right! Other humans. Yes, the yellow haired one— a ‘Megan’ I believe is the exact term—came across the rainbow many times after, sometimes with another human in tow, having fanciful adventures and what have you. There is a fascinating account of a device they held that caught voices from the air and played them back. What interests me are the _other_  stories of humans.”

The unicorn could hold himself back no longer and began to pace back and forth in the stall, his hooves keeping time with his words. The look Maybelle gave the both of them could have frozen a phoenix but Star Swirl paid her no mind. “None of those stories mention rainbows or those humans even being foreign, though they came from outside the Valley. It is a little hard to sort those histories out. Like the one of the trio of human sorceresses—before you ask, no, I’ve no idea how a human managed sorcery—and smothered all of Dream Valley in a vile, toxic ooze for no other reason than they found merriment in the sorrow of ponies. There is another of humans spiriting away newborn foals with iron chains, and yet another of a little human who tried to murder a dragonling in cold blood. These are what ponies remember in the dark of night and keep them from staying into the woods. I do not know if the humans in those stories are from your Old World or not.”

The human caught a pink unicorn tail before he could run away with another tangent. “Yes, but—sit down before that cow kicks your head in—how does this tie into why or how you ponies are here?”

“I’m on the road to it, no need to run ahead of the cart.” Star Swirl waved an unshorn fetlock at him and sat, taking back his tail in a flouncy swish. “The records become misty after the account of the foals in chains. The assumption is that it was shortly after this time the three tribes grew apart.”

“And?”

“And Wind Whistler, North Star, and Paradise were all Pegasi and took their writings with them. Aside from those three, the only other true scholar was Lady Galaxy, who did her very best to take account of events but there were so many big things happening in the world and only so much one mare could do. Many other ponies did not think to write down their histories. Her Grace Lady Fizzy was known to roll her eyes at Galaxy’s ‘flighty hobbies’. For a very long time information traveled by word of mouth alone, the advent of scroll keeping is still fairly new to us. So, to answer your original question, I—that is to say we, as a species—don’t... know. For certain.”

The human scowled at him.

“Well, what I mean is I don’t know for certain. For generations it was assumed humans as a species lived sparse and scattered in a far part of the world, assuming you existed at all. By tales of rainbow travel, the only reasonable explanation was that you had taken root in our world at some point to build your iron towers and craft your iron chains.” Star Swirl sat back on his heels and stroked his beard. “But after hearing what you’ve said to me this night, I think...” He glanced at the human’s book, then looked quickly away. “I think... t’was not you who came to our world. I think we came to yours.”

Star Swirl’s tiny laugh trembled in the dark. “You are the living antithesis of magic; your world in turn must be the same. Or at least used to be. The clouds and land do as we ask them, they are no less magic than we, you know, though they never acted as such in the Valley days.” He made the trembling laugh again. “And they say _humans_  shift landscapes!”  

The human rubbed his temples with a sigh. It was really too late at night for this. “And you came here because?”

“Well...I’ve a guess. Mind, ‘tis only a theory, but you seem eager to take what you can get. If the rainbow bridges gaps between words and brings you where you need to go and if it only works when a heart aches enough, then somepony must have truly wanted to come here. That or one from your Old World wanted to come to ours instead. It sounds as if you’d have plenty reason to seek our help out. It could have been a reversal of our first meeting and I know for certain the Megan went back to her home, which must have been here. The Rainbow bridge no longer exists, it could have snapped under the strain of everypony coming over at once. Or perhaps it did not break, but bent to bring both worlds together. Two planes, one sitting atop the other one until both became one in the same, not unlike a pair of small soap bubbles becoming one large one.”

“Ah,” said the human who couldn’t think of a better response. “That makes…sense, I suppose.” Always with the magic bubbles, these unicorns.  

 “That would explain the expanse of magic in an unmagical world. Ponies can do a number of things, but I doubt even we could reform an entire world without realizing it. Yes. Yes, I much prefer that to the other idea and besides if there were some grand migration somepony would have mentioned it somewhere, lack of writings or... or, um… or...”

The unicorn stamped in frustration as his words unraveled and rolled away from him. He blinked, looking about the barn as if seeing it for the first time. He looked at the basket he had struggled to balance, at the glow that came from the lantern and not from his horn, and then he looked at the human towering above him. The light in Star Swirl’s eyes had burnt itself out and left him in a dark place. “Or I’m moonstruck and in far o’er my own hollow horned head.” Star Swirl sank into the hay under the pressure of things ugly and unseen. “I’m sorry. You deserve a greater unicorn to help you.”

The human watched him, unsure where this sudden wave of misery had come from and wished he knew how to make the fireflies come back into the lantern. In times like these it was useful to say something supportive. “Well, magic is creepy and weird anyway and it makes me feel all anxious inside. Does that help?”

“It does not.” Star Swirl rolled out of the hay, chewed some, then swallowed it. “But it was kind of you to try.” His ears pricked suddenly and he wildly looked around. “Wait a moment, do you hear something?”

“No?”

“Exactly. No jingles.” The soothsayer looked down at the clasp of his cape where a lonely string tapered off and frayed just like his theories. His bell twinkled in the straw a few inches away. “Marvelous. Now I have to find somepony with a sewing mark, presuming one even lives in a dessert to—what are you doing?”

The man squinted over an awkward fistful of cape, “Stop moving around so much.” In the other hand he held a shining needle and a bit of white thread. Before the unicorn had time to finish asking what the human was doing the bell was halfway sewn back in place. “Thread doesn’t really match,” he murmured to himself. “It will have to do for now. Maybe someone else can cover it up with a patch or something. Little moons and stars, something cute like that, I don’t know.”

Star Swirl shook out an experimental jingle. “Not as loud as it used to be...”

“Good.” Satisfied, the human snuggled back down under the deer cloak and fluffed his pillow. “What’s so important about a bell anyway?”

“Oh, just for a...um...a spell. That I cast.”

“But I thought you said—”

The unicorn held up a hoof. “ **A**  spell. The only one I have ever managed and I have only ever done it once.”

“And it was?”

Star Swirl hunched his shoulders and fussed at his little pink beard. “Well, I... um. I traveled through time. Several decades from now.” He flinched at the last word, bracing himself for laughter or worse, a condescending smile. When he heard nothing, he cautioned a look.  

The human did not smile at him, only blinked in confusion. “Time travel is a... bad thing to do?”

“Well no, not exactly, but the morality of this spell’s far and away from anypony’s proper judgment when one takes into account the novelty and— wait. You actually believe me?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” The human shrugged as he cozied himself into a sleeping position. “It sounds bizarre but what doesn’t out here? I’ve never heard of such a thing but I have never heard of manufactured rainstorms either. Did you see anything interesting in the future?”

“Lots of snow. More snow than a winter ought to have. No...no, come to think of it, it was not winter it was spring. Or should have been.” He yawned, a consequence of his habit for late nights and the human’s early mornings. It had also been over a day since he last slept. “And I saw some ponies traveling away from the castle where I stood. Oh, and something was howling or moaning or something. The wind, probably.”

The soothsayer shook more hay from his mane. “I think we are both too tired to dwell on it. I will see you in the sunlight.” He gathered up the lantern and quietly shut the stable door. “By the by, do you think there was something to that ramble from before? The bubbles and rainbows and such?”

“I suppose I do,” yawned a voice in the dark. “You seemed so sure of it.”

If Star Swirl had anything to say to that the human did not hear, for he was already half asleep.


	7. The Molasses Morning

It had been a peculiar morning for Honey Glaze and she did not yet know if this was a good thing or not. In her experience as a veterinarian and a Conemaran she had developed a talent for diagnosing patterns in peculiarities. She also knew that when oddities came to this town, they came either in the morning or the evening.

Honey Glaze favored the peculiar evenings because even if the oddity was not in her favor, she could go to bed soon after. Ill tidings that worried her at night always looked a little better in the morning. Mornings existed to set right what was once wrong, that was the way of the world.

But a peculiar morning, now that was a thing to be wary of. Whatever odd thing happened in the morning meant that whatever happened would be with her for the remainder of the day just like spilled molasses; difficult to clean up and sticking to everything it touched. A molasses morning could stick to her for weeks or longer.

As Honey Glaze brushed her mane, tied her bonnet, and adjusted her apron she held on to hope this peculiar morning would somehow be in their favor. A pleasant surprise like an extra shipment of frosting, the pegasus tribe delivering extra rain, or that the cow with a twisted foot made a speedy recovery. That hope dimmed as soon as she came downstairs.

The First Oddity: Lickety Split was nowhere to be found.

Honey had awoken to an empty bed and empty house, which was odd enough, but to discover an empty, spotless kitchen with no sign of breakfast was cause for alarm. There was no trace of dirty dishes, no disturbed cabinets, no lingering smell of pancakes or pies, and Honey Glaze ate her donuts and oatmeal all alone. This meant one of two things: either Lickety Split woke up uncharacteristically early, politely eaten breakfast with careful intent to leave the kitchen spotless and dashed away for an early workday, or something had happened. Something important enough to wake before the cockerel, forsake her pie à la mode, and go into town all without waking Honey up. Only once before a morning began this way. That was the morning the east fields had frozen over two years ago. A missing mayor did not bode well.

The Second Oddity: The sky was different.

This morning was not blue, nor was it light grey, nor a soft pastel dawn, but a crossroad between these things. The film of clouds was just enough to grey the sky, yet the sun shone through just the same. The Conemara waiting for Honey Glaze was bathed a steady yellow hue, as if the town were trapped in amber. The mare had to admit it was very pretty, but still peculiar.

The Third Oddity: The dog, or lack thereof.

Peter did not come waggling to greet her with a lolling, slimy tongue and baying as if Honey had been gone a year instead of just a night. With the absence of Lickety Split, this may not have been unusual, for the mayor may have simply taken her beagle with her into town. But the bowl of food from last night was untouched and though the wet ground near the house was full of hoofprints, no paw prints ran beside them.

Along with this trio of oddities was the fact that Honey Glaze had virtually nothing to do. No appointments were scheduled until late afternoon, no real baking could be done until tomorrow when her brother delivered more flour (the last of it went to feed the visiting unicorn and his sasquatch) and she could not assist the mayor when the mayor wasn’t here. That only left tending to the cow, sweeping the walk, then seeking or waiting for something to do. Honey frowned at the thought. Free time was for Saturday evenings and harvest festivals, not mornings in the middle of the week when there should be work to do. With the absence of Splits and Pete, however, she welcomed the chance to search for them. But first things first.

“Good morrow, Maybelle!” she called out, opening the barn door. “Did you sleep well?”

The Jersey peered over the door of her stall, a scowl wrinkling her soft face and bags under her eyes.

“Oh, my. I guess not. What’s the trouble, dear?” The mare opened the stall door and stepped aside politely, as if escorting a noblemare from a carriage, for Maybelle practically was.

In a place famed for desserts, cows were the city’s lifeblood. Their milk went to cakes, chocolates, pastries, and the best ice cream in the Nation, all in exchange for a graze in Conemara’s famous feathergrass fields and a warm barn to sleep in. The grass was carefully tended for the cows as much as for wealthy foreign ponies. More, in fact. Cows gave them their way of life but all the unicorns had to offer was coin and trouble.

The look on Maybelle’s face and the aristocratic flips of her tail as they walked affirmed Honey Glaze’s suspicions. This was a molasses morning for certain.

“No milk today, I expect.”

“Not until tomorrow at least. All night with the talking and the lantern light and the running all about the stall. You’d think the both of them hens the way they went on. I lost at least two hours of my beauty sleep thanks to all that chatter from the bearded hollow horn and his pet… whatever.”

“Maybelle!” Honey looked about to affirm nopony had heard. “I understand you had a difficult time last night but that’s no reason to call the lad names. You ought to be ashamed.”

“Well, he is.” The cow at least had the manners to lower her voice like a decent gossip. “I saw him juggle a pillow, a blanket, a lantern, and a full basket of goods when he came in. Fumbled with every door, almost dropped the kit and caboodle twice and he didn’t levitate a thing, not one. He practically admitted to it himself. I heard him.”

Honey Glaze frowned. “That—”

The subject of interest sat just outside the front lawn where the unicorn had set up a little table busking fortunes with scrolls and star charts. Odd to do this sort of thing so early. They passed his line of sight in the quiet stalk of gossips with eyes averted elsewhere.

Out of hearing range the mare continued, “That is still no reason to call him hollow. You wouldn’t call an earth pony with a ruined leg ‘lame’, would you? Of course not.” She glanced over Maybelle’s shoulder at the pink maned stallion in front of the house. “I’m sure the poor dear tries his best. Speaking of which, I should see to his ape. If you’ll excuse me.”

“I’ll see you, Hon.”

Rudeness of calling it out aside, the fact that the bearded lad bore no magic made a great deal of sense. Lickety Split may not have been wrong last night when she assumed he was a noblecolt, but judging by his current lot in life, his bloodline didn’t matter much now. It certainly explained why the unicorn had been so polite in their presence and why he spent the night talking to his ape. He must not have many ponies to talk with. The whole thing was a little sad, now that she thought about it. As she made her way back to the barn, Honey Glaze considered inviting the fellow to lunch, assuming Splits had no issue with it. When she finally found her, anyway.

“Peter! Well, what are you doing in here, fella?”

That was one mystery solved at least. Pete must have wandered through the barn door while Maybelle went to pasture. He lingered outside the stall housing the sasquatch and the way he was standing a pony could have mistaken him for a pointer rather than a beagle. Peter stood stiff and silent and he didn’t seem to notice Honey Glaze at all, even when she whistled at him. He watched the stall the way he watched the front gate waiting for Lickety Split to come home.

“You doing alright there, Pete?”

A floppy ear made a little twitch. At least he hadn’t gone deaf. Honey peered inside the stall where the bald sasquatch stared back worriedly, he likely sensed the dog staring holes into him from the other side. Honey made sure to put Pete (who was quite opposed to the idea) in Maybelle’s stall so the ape could go back to its master without worry of heels getting nipped.

It took a few moments before the creature seemed fully convinced the dog was not going to bother him and he came out of the stall. At least he looked better fed; the basket of baked goods seemed to have done the trick. In fact, the sasquatch looked so well Honey began to wonder if it was ill at all. Despite the lack of fur, the skin seemed in good health—no splotching, no redness, no cracks, no blisters—the oatmeal bath should have helped the skin condition, but not to this extent. The swath of black fur atop his head had a healthy shine. Curled, silky fur was strange for a sasquatch, yet the curls seemed natural. Muscle tone was good for an animal confined to a small cage and for something from the Medley of Marvelous Monsters he looked fantastic. Either stargazer must have taken good care of him after stealing away or the Showmaster never got to break him in proper. But if that was the case, why was it so tame? Had the unicorn bottle fed it?

And the bone structure was... off. The night before, she wrote it off as a symptom of the ape’s mysterious illness, but looking at him now that explanation seemed unlikely. The sasquatch’s stride was easy and unhindered by the freakishly small feet and rail-straight spine. Was it simply accustomed to its bizarre proportions? Was this perhaps some subspecies she didn’t know of?

“If only I knew a scholar in the ways of primates,” Honey sighed. The sasquatch looked down at the sound of her voice and she smiled back at him. “You’re so well behaved it’s no wonder your master doesn’t keep you on a leash. What a nice fellow.”

The ape blinked slowly and sighed. If Honey Glaze didn’t know any better, she could have sworn it rolled its eyes at her.

Honey Glaze turned the ape loose in a tree not from where its master sat yawning and fawning over his charts. Upon closer inspection, there were more than star charts in front of the unicorn. There was a humble array of scrolls, broken quills, and ink jars spread about him as he furiously (and awkwardly) filled scroll after scroll with illegible mouthwriting. His eyes flitted back and forth from his writings and a most unusual scroll with rectangular, glossy parchment. Inky freckles splattered across his nose in black constellations.

“A bit bright to be casting fortunes by stars,” mused Honey.

“Just one star to see by, but ‘tis enough.” The lad glanced at her, then at the tree behind him. The sasquatch in the branches nodded to him in a way that made something twitch in Honey’s hooves. “Thank you for fetching him, ma’am.”

“No trouble.” The longer Honey watched the ape in the tree the greater the twitch in her hooves became. Something about all of this was odd. Not the molasses sort of odd, this was different, this was new somehow. “...Interesting manner of creature, that one.”

“That is certainly one way of putting it.” The stargazer seemed as if he meant to follow that statement with something else, but be went back to his scrawls and was silent.

Honey Glaze was more than glad to leave him to his work. She might have lingered all day staring at that tree like a lackwit and this morning had more pressing matters than a stargazer’s ape.

For once the morning's strangeness worked in her favor. An unscheduled drizzle happened sometime during the night and the wet ground still kept the prints of every creature that stepped upon it. Lickety Split’s distinct hoofprints—only the mayor’s shoes had those indents—led her up and out of residentials and into the shopping district. The hoofprints were lost in the midst of Conemara citizens and visitors here, but at least here she could ask around.

“Honey!” The voice reached her before the pony did, as always. A cream coated mare with a mane all red and white barber pole stripes dashed to her side. A tin whistle clinked against the buttons of her messenger vest as she trotted in place, the closest thing messenger ponies ever came to stopping. This was not Toot Sweet’s usual route. It wasn’t even her district. She must have been looking for Honey specifically. More molasses.

“G’morrow, Honey Glaze. I’m so so sorry to be a bother, I know you must be terribly busy what with the mayor’s work and the sick shorthorns and all, but—” she took a great gulp of air. “But have you seen Flo at all this morning? I woke up and she was gone and I know you told me to make doubly sure my gate was locked and Honey, I swear I locked it. Only now I’m not so sure and I don’t have time to look for her with all the work today, and...and just, have you seen my hound?”

“Toot Sweet, I told you to give that dog more exercise so this sort of thing wouldn’t happen anymore.”

“No, but I did! She ran with me all day yesterday, don’t you recall?”

Honey considered this and frowned. Toot Sweet was right; she and her greyhound passed by the house yesterday morning and then again at lunchtime. In addition, Honey was sure she’d seen the tall gate at Toot’s place locked good and tight. There was no way a tired greyhound should have been able to jump that gate. Another peculiarity.

“No, I haven’t seen Flo today. I only just got here but I’ll surely alert you if I see her, Toots. Oh! Hold a moment, have you seen Mayor Lickety Split about town? I can’t find her.”

“Things are misplaced all over, it seems.” Toot Sweet wheeled about and down the street. “She was round about town hall when I saw her last.

Town hall was two blocks away but getting there seemed to take two hours. For every step Honey took there was a pony asking about their dogs. Tea Cake couldn’t find Benedict. Shortcake had lost Anderson. Sorbet hadn’t seen his poodle since last night. Apple Drop’s setter pulled out of his collar and run off during a morning walk. Tough Cookie reported her terrier, Jude, jumping from his bath and digging under the fence before anypony could stop him. The Treacle Twins were beside themselves with grief, for they had searched for Quentin all last night and still had no sign of their corgi. This last account worried Honey Glaze a great deal, for Quentin was recovering from ringworm and likely still contagious. An outbreak was all she needed right now. She was glad she’d put Pete in the barn where he was safe, it was beginning to seem like dog-nappers were about.

Mayor Lickety Split VI was under the awning of town hall, not far from the statue of Conemara’s founders, Gingerbread and Crème Brûlée. A basket of emerald feathergrass sat next to her and she wore her very best hat, the one made of taffeta and lace and an ornamental custard sitting on top. Lickety Split was not tied up in tragic chaos, nor cowering under a catastrophe, nor did she duel with some disastrous debacle. In fact, she sat happy-as-you-please, eating a cheese danish.

Honey sighed. Wearing such a formal hat was cause for concern, as were the bags under her eyes, but if the mayor still found time for breakfast then whatever had happened couldn’t have been a total disaster.

“A-ha, so here you are!” A less professional part of Honey Glaze delighted in a proper scolding, the happy sort born of averted catastrophes. “Have you any idea what you’ve put me through this morning? Miss Mayor Lickety Split VI just what do you think you’re doing at—”

“At work?” Splits coolly licked a bit of cheese from her hoof. “Aren’t you the one constantly fussing I ought to start my day earlier?”

“Don’t you turn this on me, madam, this situation is not at all what I meant and you know it. I meant for you to keep schedule, not run pell-mell all about town without telling anypony.” Being in public was the only thing keeping Honey’s voice in check. “No note, no goodbye or anything. I swear, your head is emptier than a bubble in broth. I awoke and I did not know where you were. Things were out of sorts. It was... cause for concern."

A sly crumb of a smile winked the corners of the mayor's mouth. "You were worried for me."

"I was nothing of the sort." Honey Glaze readjusted her spectacles and gave an indignant, professional humph. "It was simply a matter of noting a diversion from your normal habits. Had something happened to you, it would be detrimental to the city of Conemara as well as my job. You are the mayor after all. What concerns you concerns us all. That is all there is to it."

"Your nose is too pretty to stick up in the air like a unicorn. You should bring it down to earth where it is appreciated."

"You are a slovenly, foolish, gluttonous politician and nopony will ever love you. It is a marvel you were reelected."

“Whatever you say, honey bunch.” Lickety Split was quiet for some time after that. She watched the lazy bustle of Conemara, nodding her head and gently waving hello to ponies strolling by. “Lady Sundance and her stewards came by the house this morning.”

The mayor’s voice stayed sweet, but the gravity of her words had a bitter aftertaste. Her smile stiffened. A pony without Honey’s attention to detail wouldn’t have noticed the change at all. Regardless of Splits’ haphazard habits, Honey admired the mayor’s exceptional talent for smooth facades. “The Lady is of the Sun Circle, so it’s only natural the old nag was at our door before dawn.”

Honey Glaze blinked. Her tail gave a nervous flick. “I see. I expect there was an incident?”

“But of course, dear. Only the most dire of developments.” She gave a laugh empty of laughter. “She needed three crates of grass to supply House Gusty’s mid-summer ball.”

“But handling grass is Zoysia and Topiary’s department, not the mayor’s.”

“Tell Lady Sundance that.” The sides of Lickety Split’s mouth twisted and bent into something like a frown. It lasted a second or two before it wrenched back into her pleasant smile. “It seems ensuring that the citizens of Conemara stand fair distance from proper noblemares falls under my jurisdiction too. So does the number of mice in town, the dirt upon the roads, the shininess of the windows, and the scuffing of hoof polish. Not to mention the unscheduled drizzling this morning, even though weather is entirely out of my control. It has been an educational morning.” She finished the danish with a fearsome bite.

The mayor looked to her aide and her eyes softened. “I didn’t wake you because I know how out-of-sorts you get over this kind of thing.”

Honey grinned in spite of herself. “Unicorns or out-of-place mornings?”

“Both.” Splits turned to her aide with the smile that was Honey’s favorite. A real one. “I’m glad you came to seek me out, Hon. I needed the company.”

“Yes, well. I am not entirely unfond of your company either.” She smoothed out a rumple her brown, coiffed tail. “Is Lady Sundance still here? Is that the reason for the basket of feather grass?”

“That, honeybunch, is Honey’s brunch.” The mayor grinned, proud of her wordplay. “Or early afternoon snack, whichever you prefer. Consider it—don’t roll your eyes, that was a good joke and you know it—consider it a part of your birthday surprise.”

“...My birthday is half a month away, Lickety Split.”

“That is what makes it a surprise. Also, there was a surplus in Zoysia’s delivery.”

Honey arched an eyebrow. “Odd that Sundance didn’t just take the extra grass. A basket is hardly a dollop in the honey jar.” That said, there shouldn’t have been any runoff at all. Grass measurements, in fact the quality of feathergrass in general, had dropped after Topsoil left. Two ponies overlooking the heart and soul of Conemara was not enough.

“She wanted three crates, no more and no less. Why anypony would refuse extra grass is beyond me, but who can figure out the unicorns? Come, let’s take our brunch at home for some rest. Don’t give that look, now. If you really had work to do, you would be doing it. Am I wrong?”

Honey Glaze sighed and agreed. Molasses aside, there was nothing that couldn’t wait an hour and it had been a stressful morning for both of them. And it hurt her to see the joyless rock candy grin Splits must have held for hours. It would be wise to rest a while at home, where the mayor was free to frown and grouse all she pleased.

The walk home smoothed out Splits’ mood and soon she was back to her usual chaff and chatter. “A basket of feather grass is just what you need, Hon. You’re already the thinnest thing in Conemara, aside from the messengers. The way you carry on, you’ll worry yourself down to a skeleton and I much prefer you die a little death than a big one.”

Honey Glaze snorted. “Off with you and your spring talk. I ought to kick you into a barn.”

“How fortunate we need our barns whole, then!” As they came into the residential district, she swiveled her ears curiously. “Seems awful quiet this morning. No barking from the Pizzelle place.”

“About that. I don’t mind a short brunch but I must away soon after. There have been numerous complaints this morning concerning the—”

“Good gaufrette! Oh, on my word, what is that?!”

Honey looked ahead; her heart sank to her stomach. The itch in her hooves came back with a vengeance. “That,” she said, “Is the answer to a question all Conemara’s been asking.”

There, in the front yard, in Lickety Splits’ favorite maple tree, sat the stargazer’s ape. He sat on the highest branch that could support his weight, feet carefully tucked underneath him, ready to scramble away if he had to. He gripped a gnarled branch that was longer than the sasquatch was tall. It was unusually smooth for a branch broken off a tree, almost as if it had been whittled smooth.

Below him sat every dog in town.

Flo, Toot Sweet’s greyhound, stretched out on the tree roots as if it were a rug by the hearth. Lickety Splits’ beagle, Peter, was next to her, front paws on the tree trunk, staring intently. Apple Drops’ setter circled the trunk as if he would find a stairway hidden somewhere. Jude and Benedict and Timothy and four stray mongrels with no name sat patiently in the dappled shadows. Bingley, Pizzelle's pomeranian, stared up with tiny, glittering eyes. The Treacles’ corgi bounced on stubby legs, he didn’t seem to understand that the branches were too high to reach. He was in the yawning shadow of Shortcake's great dane, who actually could have reached the lower branches if he tried. The only dog missing was Nougat’s collie, who was away in Hoofshire for the cowdog trials.

They gathered in quiet congress under the maple tree and wagged their tails as the sasquatch glared down at them. The ape’s mouth pulled back in a worried grimace when they moved.

Lickety Split pursed her lips and tilted her head. “Huh. What do you make of it?”

Honey Glaze just stared. The itchy feeling in her hooves began to spread, slithering out and over her hooves and into her pastern to make itself at home betwixt carpus and cannon bone. It was as if the ground was shifting beneath her. The soft, beautiful feathergrass suddenly felt... wrong. She wondered if she ought to run, though she’d no logical reason to do so. Where was this feeling coming from? Why did she feel like a foreigner in her hometown? Honey did not feel like herself in the presence of the stargazer’s ape. She did not like the way it held the attention of the hounds tighter than any leash or lead. It suddenly occurred to her that the average sasquatch was too heavy to climb maple trees.

“Must be full of food, I s’pose.”

Honey Glaze jolted. “What?”

Lickety Split inclined a hoof toward the bag fastened to the ape’s back. “The parcel he’s carrying for his master. It must have food inside.”

“Oh. Yes. That makes sense, I guess.”

“Hon? Are you feeling alright? You look like you’ve seen a hydra in your bed.”

“I’m perfectly alright,” she lied. “I only wonder where the bearded lad’s gone.”

“Fine thing to wonder, that.” Lickety Split flattened her ears and looked around the yard. “He’s the one that owns the beast causing all this hound harassment.”

As if the mayor had summoned him with an incantation, the young stallion approached the house, jingling and tinkling with his bells and little bag of tricks. He did not seem to notice the stink eye from the mayor, nor Honey’s unease, nor his ape’s distress. His eyes were bright and his canter merry, as if there was nothing out of the ordinary at all. The unicorn put down his bag, taking out his ink and scrolls. Then he removed a quill from behind his ear, smiled at his ape sitting in the maple and said, “There, I told you I wouldn’t be long.”

The ape made a little huff at him.

“I’ll grant it took a wee bit longer than I expected, but there was a line and the clerk had to look in the backroom to find inks that did not smudge. I cannot write with inks that smudge.”

The ape gripped the tree trunk and made a low hooting sound.

“Well… no, not exactly.” When the ape made another hoot and gestured with his stick, the unicorn continued, “Don’t be silly, they’ll do nothing of the sort. Look how the hounds wag their tails, it means they like you.”

The ape grunted.

“I’m not, either!” The unicorn pointed a blue hoof at Flo. “These are tame, you are thinking of feral dogs. There is a difference.” He twitched an ear as the ape made low grunt. “Of course I will, what sort of pony do you take me for?”

The mayor raised an eyebrow. “Hon, do you suppose the bearded lad’s touched in the head?”

Honey Glaze pressed closer to Lickety Split. As the unicorn spoke to his ape, the uncomfortable buzz in her legs wormed into her ribcage. Her common sense circled the wagons with an arsenal of rationalizations for what they were seeing. “There’s nothing odd about talking to pets. Perhaps his gift is in animal communication.”

“I never heard a pony talk to his pet as if the pet talked back. And if his gift was in animal work, why is his mark of stars? I still say he’s touched. I don’t honestly care either way, I just want these dogs off my lawn.” Splits raised her head and brought up her administrative voice, the one reserved for courthouses and elections. “Here, lad! Your animal’s disrupting the peace, not to mention my yard.”

“I saw!” The unicorn’s pink beard stretched to meet his ears as he beamed at them. “Is it not fascinating? There were but two dogs when I left to fetch more ink half an hour ago, now that number’s quadrupled. Oh—my mistake, there are four more on the other side! Sun and stars, has anypony ever seen a thing so strange?”

Honey Glaze meant to demand the stargazer take these matters seriously and harshly chastise his irresponsibility with his creatures, not to mention leaving the gate open. Instead, the anxiety in her chest shrank her voice as she asked, “Why they are doing this? Are you the one who’s done this?”

Please say that you are. Give me a rational answer. Say you’ve enchanted our town from malice or incompetence. Tell me I am imagining things. Tell me anything but—

“I have absolutely no idea, but I can tell you it’s nothing I’ve done.” The stargazer looked back to the tree. The ape glowered down at him and it stole the wind from the unicorn’s sails. The way he cowed under its gaze, it was like he didn’t own the ape at all. It almost seemed the other way around. With more sobriety the lad said, “I’d like to get him down myself, we have places to go. But whenever my sasquatch moves, the dogs go into a state and make him frightened to come down.”

Lickety Split, who’d quite enough of this nonsense and worried for Honey’s well-being, rounded on the unicorn with a voice normally reserved for ruffians loitering about the salt house. “Now, see here—”

She was interrupted by the sound a tin whistle. A long, high note drifting over the rooftop followed by three shorter notes. Toot Sweet was announcing an arrival.

“Oh, black rot and fireblight! Now what?”

Honey Glaze, glad for the distraction, pricked her ears. The cows in the north pasture were upset. There were hoofbeats. They were too light to be ponies, but moved too quickly to be goats or sheep. “The Company is coming.”

Lickety Split sighed. “I suppose we better meet them and send them on their way.” She readjusted her custard hat, shined her pin, and walked out into the middle of the road. Honey Glaze swallowed down the distress from the stargazer’s ape, shook out the twitching in her hooves, and held her head high as she took her place a few feet behind the mayor, ready to be of assistance. Molasses morning or no molasses morning, there was still protocol to follow. Any sign of unrest might convince the Company that Conemara needed their help, and that was the last thing anypony needed.

The Hartfelt Company always arrived unscheduled, but today was the first time they arrived in near silence. Usually they ran and danced along with dogs baying at their heels or yapping from the fences as the deer made merry. But of course there was none of that today. If Toot Sweet hadn’t whistled, the town would have been taken completely by surprise.

Honey spared a glance back towards the tree. The dogs sensed the harts approaching and their muscles tightened and bunched under their fur. Peter’s nose twitched at the scent, poodle whined, and the greyhound fidgeted on her paws like a foal in want of an outhouse. But none of them moved from their spot.

It wasn’t long before a quartet of deer—two hinds, a stag, and a yearling just growing into his horns—leapt over the horizon and into the residential district. They elegantly bounded over trade carts smoothly weaved around lampposts, every move they made smooth, stylish, and expertly coordinated. A practical ballet of cervines danced along the road, all song and laughter. (If Honey hadn’t seen this routine thrice before she might have been impressed.)

The Company might have carried on this way for another ten minutes, but Mayor Lickety Split VI was not in the mood for antlered antics. The soft rolls of her face hardened into a business mare’s firm but friendly gaze. Her approach, bedecked in hard smiles and gleaming mayoral pins, stopped the company in mid-frolic. The yearling was only a few inches taller than most ponies, but the pair of does and the muscled stag towered two feet over the mayor. The round little pony in the custard hat held them with her eyes as surely as the stargazer’s ape held the dogs.

The mayor snorted and dug her back hooves into the dirt. “Look here. There’s no reason for the lot of you to come storming in here with all your fuss and folderol. We earth ponies work for a living and not all of us work in the daytime and I will not have the night shift in my town set askew because you can’t come in to town like decent folk.”

The stag stepped to the forefront and stretched his muscled neck down to meet Lickety Split at eye level. “Oh, the fair mayor mare is all a-nettled! It seems something has upset the happy fettle here in Conemara town.”

“Save the poetry for your head hart and hinds, Dogwood. I am in no mood.” Splits looked over the hinds flanking the stag and the yearling peeking out behind them. “I see the Knave hasn’t come today.”

“The wildwood needed his attention,” said the yearling.

“We’ve partly come to mention is there have been attercop about,” said a hind. “But if you like, we could fetch him?”

“That shan’t be necessary, Larch,” said Honey Glaze. “However you can tell him to properly organize when his Company comes to call. It really is too early in the day for this.”

Dogwood lifted his head to show off his sixteen point antlers in the sunlight. “No such thing, miss. For fair harts every hour of every day sings us to fly upon the air and make lark with Aspen and Larch.”

Larch piped up, “But if our antics here antagonize these emerald fields where fair Conemara lies and cause sweet Honey there to criticize, then on The Knave’s behalf, we four do apologize.”

Honey Glaze sighed, “It really isn’t necessary for you to come into town like this. Out in your wildwood you do plenty for us, shooing off various troublesome creatures and the like.”

Dogwood scowled. “Perhaps, but what of the oppression lain heavily upon your shoulders? How else could we be sure the tyrannical Unicorn Kingdom in the south does not overtax or impose upon you?” Larch and Aspen nodded. The yearling seemed more interested in the fields of feathergrass than discussing systematic oppression of the working class.

Honey smiled her sweetest, most comforting smile. “You think too little of yourselves. Why, the Company scared off a party of haughty aristocrats just this morning, didn’t they Splits?”

“Absolutely true, Honey. Caused a grand amount of trouble with their oppressive taxes, monopolies, wearing their monocles and…such. Ah, but you can be certain that upon mere mention of the Knave of Harts their tune changed quick as a wink.”

The deer looked at each other. Dogwood preened like a cockerel. “Truly?” Larch’s chest swelled, Aspen smiled, and the yearling blinked.

Lickety Splits’ voice because syrupy sweet, “For real and for true. Without careful watch of the Knave’s Hartfelt Company all Conemara would be crushed under the iron hoof of King Mohs.”

Honey Glaze nodded serenely. “Our kith and kin will sleep soundly tonight. Bless your hearts.”

“Ah, our harts are fully blessed already in the glen of the wildwood, miss,” said Dogwood, looking at the feathergrass basket. “Though there is better recompense for our vigilance…”

Good. The sooner the Company was paid, the sooner they could leave before they had the chance to cause any more trouble. It was a shame to lose a promising brunch but it was better to lose a grass basket than risk a rebellious deer wandering into the shopping district. Honey Glaze didn’t know what they would do upon actually meeting unicorn aristocrats, but the result would be a serious drop in business from the Kingdom at the very least. Best they take their pay and head back to—

“O-ho! What’s this skulking in the shadow of madam mayor’s residence?” The yearling pointed his stubby antlers to where the stargazing unicorn took his notes. His comrades pooled around him and soon the bearded fellow was surrounded. Not that he seemed to notice, wrapped up as he was in his scrawls and scribblings.

“Hmm. Tis a puzzle from young Douglas Fir.” A smooth grin trailed on Larch’s face as she circled the stargazer. “Praytell, what earth pony born sports frail frame and spiraling horn? How strange, how odd, and yet of the earth he must be, for t’was Conemara that sent thee.”

Aspen, the smaller hind, giggled, “He jingles like chimes on the wind and feathers in his mouth doth show. Mayhap of late he’s eaten crow?”

“Nay, fair hinds!” crowed the stag. “Behold the merry pink upon his face, of grass and sweets there are no trace. An earthen pony he cannot be; thus a son of a nanny goat is what we see!”

The yearling frowned. “Um. I’m pretty sure that’s a unicorn.”

The other three deer turned as one to glare at him.

The yearling trailed a cloven hoof in the dirt. “Well, he _is_.”

“It’s called a colorful insult, Douglass,” Larch sighed. “Good job ruining the meter, by the way.”

“Well, I didn’t know!”

“How? Almost everything we just said was iambic pentameter!” cried Aspen.

“That’s what comes of missing rehearsal. Now the whole thing’s a rot. Hope you’re proud of yourself, Douglas Fir.” Dogwood stamped with a delicate fore hoof, “We finally get the chance to demonstrate the wildness of the wildwood and you trip over the metrical foot.”

“Actually,” said the unicorn, “That wasn’t even close to iambic pentameter. Those were couplets.”

Larch glared down at him. “I don’t believe anyone asked your opinion.”

“And I didn’t give one. It is not a matter of opinion, it is a fact. Those were couplets in form and rhyme pattern.” He took a step backward, more to look the doe in the face than from intimidation. “But if it helps, they were decent couplets.”

“Decent?” Larch twitched her ears unhappily. “Just decent?”

“What was the matter with them?” asked Douglas Fir.

“Well, it’s not so much that your poetry is bad, it’s just that it isn’t...very....good?” His words meekly trailed off as the harts drew in closer. He lowered his ears, eying the hard hooves and sharp tines surrounding him. “But, um. You know, it is really all but a matter of opiNION!”

With a dip of the head and a nudge from Larch and young Douglas Fir, the unicorn was scooped into the cups of Dogwood’s antlers. His legs draped over the stag’s head like bony blue streamers. “Put me down!” He flailed and kicked out until Dogwood violently jostled him still.

“I wouldn’t do that, blue blooded critic. These tines of mine come long and sharp. And heavy.” The stag chuckled darkly. “Hate to think what’d happen if you fell off in mid stride.”

“Tis a long way down,” added Aspen. “And even if you don’t break your legs, do you think you can wink off before you get trampled? Then again, maybe you’re faster than you look. Would you care to find out?”

The stargazer stared at the ground far below him and tucked in his hooves. His mouth rumpled into a frown and groaned, more frustrated than afraid. He stretched his neck towards the maple in the mayor’s yard.

The bald ape, transfixed at the harts since Dogwood recited his first line, jolted and hopped to a low branch. The dozen dogs instantly whipped into a frenzy of barking and frightened the creature back into the higher branches. The ape met its master’s eye and furrowed its brow.

The deer were already making move to leave, as Aspen took up the basket of grass and Dogwood paced about the road, getting used to the added weight on his head. The commotion from so many hounds made the company a bit nervous.

“We can always meet up later.” The unicorn managed to keep a note optimism in his voice. His ape just frowned harder.

“Nay, little critic,” said Larch. “Later doesn’t fit our schedule. Methinks you’ll be meeting the rest of the company right now. The Knave of Hearts is aching to meet you, I’m sure.” The hind reared with a laugh and leap. “To the Wildwood hills, fair harts, to the hills! Yoicks and away!”

The four followed suit and in their perfectly choreographed leaps and bounds— though imperfectly executed, for Dogwood struggled to hold his head high under the added weight—they ran down the path to where their woodland waited for them.

Honey Glaze watched parade of cervines and the squirming unicorn in Dogwood’s antlers. She tapped a hoof and sighed to herself.

The colder, practical part of her assured that it was better to let the harts have their fun. The unicorn and the satisfaction of sedition would entertain them for quite some time and it put them back in their woodland, far away from any unicorn with actual power. She shuddered to think what could happen if the Company met the likes of Lady Sundance.

But a more sentimental part of her noted there was very little honor in abandoning a pony with a hollow horn who could hardly defend himself — let alone one of the few unicorns to actually thank a Conemaran for their hospitality.

"Shall we set out after him, Splits? Or perhaps send word to the Kingdom of what's happened to him?"

"Send to who? We've no idea where the lad's from. He never even told us his name." The mayor shrugged her soft shoulders. "Besides, the fate of a unicorn is no business of ours. It's enough we work all day feeding their fancy parties to get sneers and scoffs as thank you. We won't be their guards too. The harts are hardly worth such worry anyway. The lad will be fine, I'm sure. The Knave favors bluster over bruises."

"Yes, but they’ve never successfully hassled a unicorn before. Can we be quite sure nothing grave will happen to him?"

Lickety Split VI shrugged again. "Meh."

The mayor sent for Toot Sweet to retrieve a very upset greyhound and send word to the owners of the other dogs. None of them left easy. Many had to be dragged off and almost all of them hollered and cried and whined and wailed the whole way. In her seven years as a veterinarian Honey Glaze never heard animals make such awful sounds. The dogs were back in their yards and homes before suppertime and most of Conemara was content once more. Most, but not all.

It must have climbed down after Shortcake and the Treacles came by, when she was busy looking for signs of the corgi's ringworm. As she passed the empty maple tree, Honey stared at the ugly criss-crossing claw-marks scarring Lickety Split’s beautiful feathergrass lawn. She met Peter by the front gate, where the miserable beagle rested his head on his paws.

The bald ape crouched on the other side of the padlocked gate. He poked at the Company’s cloven hoofprints pressed into the dirt with his left paw while propping himself up with the stick held in his right. The stargazer’s ape stood up again with a spine too straight and feet too small for a sasquatch, glanced back at her with eyes that knew more than they ought. Then he slung the grey bag over his back and followed the trail down into the Knave’s wildwood.

Honey Glaze sighed and stroked the whimpering beagle behind the ears with a twitching, itching hoof. She didn’t know if it was for the dog’s comfort or hers. “You’re a good dog, Pete.” Together they watched the stargazer’s ape until he vanished from view.

 

* * *

 

 

The ponies of Conemara spoke of it for years to come, that peculiar week when the dogs pawed at sections of the road and at the roots of a certain maple tree as if a friend of theirs had died there. How the mayor’s beagle bayed and howled at nothing for hours and nopony could make him stop. How Sorbet’s spoiled poodle kept trying to run into the woods when he normally never left the soft security of his wicker basket.

How Honey Glaze, the most sensible soul for miles, made grooves in the street from pacing back and forth through town at ghastly hours of the night, following invisible footprints. She claimed her hooves did not know the ground there anymore and when Lickety Split demanded to know what that meant Honey Glaze had no answer for her. Months later, she could still be found staring at an empty stable, feeling ill at ease for no apparent reason, as if a ghost lived there.

On Sundays over sundaes Conemarans would nod to each other and say, “Odd duck of a time that was” and “Aye, it’s the fruit grown from stargazing unicorns what carry weird bags of tricks. Especially ones you let in your house.” Mayor Lickety Splits’ townhouse was the core and cause of the strangeness; everypony knew it, though only the Treacle Twins actually saw the caped unicorn stay there. The lad bewitched the place, of course (whether “the place” concerned the mayor’s house, the Residential District, or Conemara as a whole was a matter of opinion) for being slighted. The Mayor and her aide claimed that the lad was pleasant enough, but unicorns almost always found ways feel slighted in earth towns, no matter how polite you were.

Sometimes during these talks a silly pony would theorize that perhaps it was not the bearded unicorn at all, but the bald ape that traveled with him. A few even wondered if it was an ape at all, if it was perhaps a mythological creature in disguise. These ponies received polite smiles, eye-rolls, and of-course-dears, and were then ignored as the conversation became sensible again.


	8. A String of Harts

At home it was often said that conversations with Star Swirl were nigh impossible. Ponies in front of his face only had a small fraction of his attention while the rest of his head floated out and onwards. It had been that way for longer than he could remember. “The foal was born with blinders about his eyes,” his kin often said.

As time passed over his unlit horn, those gentle chaffs congealed into biting criticism. So be it, then. If he appeared deaf, dithering, or discourteous in the eyes of the unenlightened, that was no business of his.

 Star Swirl looked at the harts all about him and sighed. He did have to admit, though, that more attention to his surroundings might have prevented his current predicament.  

In spite of his rough apprehension, the unicorn’s swift ride through the green hills was fair and smooth, all things considered. Dogwood’s tall leaps and hard landings jostled Star Swirl’s stomach and banged him about the cage of antlers early on, but the weight of his passenger soon put him out of that habit. The stag was in no hurry for an ugly spill or a sprained ankle.

Star Swirl did not know where he was being taken or what plans waited for him there. The tines arched above his head in beautiful, sharp points and could run him through with little trouble. He did not know how far the human’s tracking skill stretched and if the harts traveled on far enough, it could be difficult to reconvene.

These should have been Star Swirl’s main concerns, but they only brushed the edges of his thoughts. He had greater things to wonder on than something as paltry as his own welfare. A kidnapping was inconvenient, but it was no reason to interrupt his studies.

The incident under the maple was intriguing and the most exciting part of his travels so far, aside from the initial discovery of a human. What made the hounds behave the way they did? Why did they not approach the human until the next day? When did they realize he was there? And how? And why? Why did they wait so patiently? Why did tame dogs have this reaction while ferals did not? Did the dogs of Conemara share bloodlines with the fabled wolf servants of the contradiction creatures? Would they have served the human if he asked? If so, to what limit? Was it limited to Conemaran dogs or would Prince Argent’s favored hound bow before a human too? Or was it only a coincidence and the hounds were only curious about the absence of magic around the tree?

If only the human hadn’t been frightened of the dogs—ridiculous, a creature that could fell dragons spooked by a little beagle—he might have made observations more astute.

“And then,” Star Swirl mused to himself, “There is the matter of the honey colored mare. She knew more than she knew.”

It was possible that her wizened earth pony instincts told her there was a dangerous creature about, the way a turtledove knew which way was south. That certainly would have been the conclusion his teachers would have come to.

Or... Or it meant that the void of magic draped about the human spread beyond the nullification of spells. It went deep into that mysterious land of magic at the core of all ponies; the thing that made the Nation’s flowers grow and the Hegemony clouds take shape. Things nopony had ever truly studied before, not just functional spells for lifting heavenly bodies or uprooting diamonds. Something deeper, older, yet still brand new. Like Lady Galaxy or Mimic the Gold-Shod, he could walk paths lit by starlight.

All of this might have been more exciting had if not for the fact that he’d no way to prove any of it. Theory was useless without execution, as far as the schools of magic were concerned and until his notes could be read by light from his horn, none would read them or care. But for the first time in many years, his mood was too bright to be overcast by that troubling fact. In the cups of Dogwood’s antlers, Star Swirl smiled.

 

The Hartfelt Company slowed their pace as the world changed from hills to woodland. They came to a place where Star Swirl could not see the tops of the trees. The sun was a stranger here. The harts weaved through a maze of branches and bark like a sewing needle. Dogwood went on carefully to keep his antlers from snagging.

They stopped at a tight little copse surrounded by brambles. If Star Swirl strained his ears, he could hear music from a lyre leaking out into the forest. From behind the trees came a voice, high pitched and gossamer thin. “Halt! By the heart of harts, the glory of the glen, the wild of the wood, who goes there?”

Larch shook her head with a sigh. “I do wish we didn’t have to go through this every time we took three steps from the trees. It’s getting a little tiresome.”

Dogwood nodded. “It could rhyme at the very least.”

Then Larch lifted her head and voice. “By the wild of the wood, by the glory of the glen, by the heart of harts, it is we who left the grace of the woods so wild and wandered. ‘Tis we who left to allocate autonomy to the disenfranchised and despaired in Conemara yonder: the Knave’s first doe, Larch, with fair Aspen and Dogwood. And young Douglas Fir, who misses rehearsals and ruins meters.” She paused for dramatic effect. “And a unicorn.”

There was a stir of soft, excited voices behind the brambles before the thin voice called out again. “Alright, then. What’s the password?”

"Wha-? Since when do we have a password?!"

"Since three hours ago. It's a very good password, the Knave came up with it hisself. I helped!"

"You made up a password while we weren't even here?"

"Yes."

"But ye still expect us to know it."

"Uh-huh."

The hind laid her ears back and gave the brambles flattest look she could manage. The other harts exchanged a look.

"Oh, but it's alright, Larch, you still know it! Just call out once like a love-struck butterfly, then twice like a grumpy swordfish."

“Um. Neither of those animals makes a sound,” Aspen said.

“Exactly!" the sentry giggled. "You’ll never forget it!"

Dogwood tilted his head so far to the side Star Swirl yelped for fear of falling out. “Whose voice is that? Is...is that Poplar?”

“Can’t be her,” the yearling laughed. “Popple’s still in her spots. Whoever heard of a fawn keeping sentry?”

The voice grew an octave. “Douglas Fir, you hush! I grew out of ‘most all my spots a whole month ago and anyway you’re hardly older than I am. If _your_ fool self is old enough to leave the trees, then _I’m_ old enough to keep watch from ‘em.” The bramble moved aside to reveal a fawn wrinkling her little nose at them. “An’ you can quit calling me Popple, too.”

Star Swirl found himself in a clearing striped with sunlight and the grass bitten low. The gentle lilt of strings hit a sour note and cut off. The other harts concealed themselves in the pockets of shadow, with only small hints to their identity. A hoof here, a red coat there, the shine from a nose, and off to the side, in a bed of oak leaves, a huge pair of amber eyes looking back at him.

 _Odd eyes for a deer._ The figure they belonged to was smaller and stubbier than the other harts and as it turned to the side he saw the blunt stub of an antler. Likely another yearling, it was too big for a fawn. As the other harts—an older stag and a heavyset doe—stepped into the light to sniff and stare at the pony in Dogwood’s antlers, the deer in the shadows only blinked at him and did not move.

The stag was a handsome creature, dark muzzled with a rich summer coat the color of fallen leaves, antlers branched out tall and wide in an impressive six and twenty tines. A circlet of plaited ivy curled behind his ears, sprigs climbed up to hug the lower crowns of his antlers. But there was white frost upon his face and he moved in the burdened, languid steps of a creature approaching the autumn of his life, graceful steps though they were.

“And so our intrepid pilgrims step into their woodlands wild, returned from quest won in wit and guile.” He touched noses with Larch, then Aspen. Star Swirl felt the Dogwood’s muscles tense like a bowstring.

The elder stag turned to them with a thoughtful little smile. The velvet of his antler prodded at Star Swirl’s barrel. “I didn’t know Conemara had a haberdasher. ‘Tis a fine hat, Dogwood, but I’m afraid the color doesn’t go with your eyes at all. Tell me, what manner is it? Prisoner purloined or a comrade caught?”

Dogwood took a step back and bowed his head, dumping out the unicorn in a jingling heap. Star Swirl peeked out from the cape draped over his head before tossing it back into place. A pink starburst of mane flared out behind his head, prompting snickers around the clearing.

“I can’t tell what manner he is, Knave.” The stag cricked his neck and smirked as the unicorn shrank under his gaze “But he seems partial to lyrical criticism.”

“Hm?” Star Swirl widened his eyes and innocently looked around for this rude, nonexistent pony. He put a hoof to his chest. “I? I am only Star Swirl, a poorly scholar cataloging wild creatures of the Nation.” He looked around at the deer with a tiny, foallike frown. “Although it appears I’ve discovered wilder creatures than intended.”

Larch looked to the Knave. “All of a sudden he’s all shyness and shivers. Didn’t hear a lick of that in Conemara. I’d not listen to a word he says with without a versed opinion.” She took a sniff of the unicorn’s mane and shied away, flicking her wisp of a tail. “I don’t like the smell of him, harts. Not at all.”

The great stag took a whiff for himself. His hind legs fidgeted as a shiver ran through them. “Then a well versed opinion we will have. Heartstrings! What say you?”

The yearling with the odd eyes looked up. There was a light timbre in his voice, higher than a hart in his first pair ought to have. “I say he knows more than he tells us.” He stood with a rustle of leaves and stepped forward. “Though I’m guessing you’re wanting me to tell you a bit more than that.”

The hooves weren’t cloven. The coat was a light, minty green. A mane hung about the shoulders in stringy white tangles, though it might have been a different shade once. What he had presumed an antler nub was in fact a spiraled little horn. On both sides of her flank, the mark of a golden lyre.

Star Swirl quietly nickered in astonishment. It was a mare—and a unicorn mare at that! And judging by the crow's feet, she was no yearling either.

Heartstrings circled him once, twice, poked at him at little, then sat. “He’s telling the truth about the scholar bit, I can grant him that. But our lead hind’s right to be suspicious. There’s nothing simple about this colt at all, except maybe his luck.”

She levitated a tuft of Star Swirl’s mane and waved it in the Knave’s face. “Take a gander at these brash colors, you’ll find it in nobler blood. From the pink in his mane and the stars on his flank I’d say he’s of House Galaxy. I thought it might have been House Fizzy at first, but the mark—and the name—comes from stars and that family’s all about stars.”

The mare glanced back at Star Swirl, who was still staring holes into her head. She flicked her tail and lifted a forehoof. “What?”

 There were several answers to that question, mostly other questions. Things like _What are you doing in the deer’s wildwood?_  and _Were you also abducted?_  and _Are you aware your tail has seventeen burrs and a pinecone in it?_  and _Are these harts going to leave me for dead in a ditch somewhere?_

But he decided on, “Why are you naked?”

Heartstrings glanced down at herself. “Why not? Everyone else is.”

She lifted his cape with a chipped forehoof and frowned at the light peeking through thinning silk. “Really, was this the best ye could do, Larch? Even with the blue of his blood, the wee lamb’s a far cry from an arrogant lord or a fat tax collector.”

“He doesn’t even have a coin purse on him,” observed the heavyset doe. “A disappointment, really.”

Larch flicked an ear. “We left his possessions where they lay. Noble harts have no use for gold. And I don’t see _you_  bringing back any aristocrats, Willow.” She glanced back at the pair of unicorns, small under the arching trees. “What he lacks in wealth he makes up for in arrogance.”

“He insulted us,” Dogwood put in. “Or our poetry, at least. Same thing.”

Star Swirl snatched his cape back, summoning all his will to bite back a retort. “I meant no insult, I was merely putting my learned skills in constructive criticism to use and that is all. Perhaps I was too brash in judgment. After all, had I known that in mere moments I’d be nose to nose with the legendary Knave of Harts and his Company—”

The old stag pricked his ears, leaning his neck down to pony level. He smelled of moss, musk and cedar. “You know of me?”

Reader, like all good little ponies Star Swirl knew lying was disgraceful. He also knew, however, that the truth could bend, twist, and curve into whatever shape suited him best. All ponies in polite society knew that.

“Oh, but of course I know of you! How could I not? The Unicorn Kingdom is all a fluster with talk of fearsome harts—not in public, of course, we still have our pride, you understand. But when last I saw him, the prince declared a handsome reward for the knave’s capture, though none have gone to claim it.”

“Has he?”

 The blue unicorn nodded seriously. “I have it on good authority he guards the queen fiercely, in fear of her capture. In the evening the ladies in House Twinkle whisper rumors of rogues behind their fans. There is a curfew now.”

Larch stood over him, squinting as if she could press the truth out of him with her eyelids. Star Swirl smiled politely at her, for he had said nothing that untrue. Foals had to be indoors by nine, the daughters in House Twinkle suspected one amongst them moonlighted in piracy, and in seventeen years Prince Argent never lost a chess match or a game of cards.

“‘Tis rare we even leave the Kingdom at all, for fear of the wild of your woods.” Star Swirl pointed in Conemara’s direction. “I am the first unicorn you have seen in some time, yes?”

“Aye,” Larch admitted. “The company’s not seen a horned pony in ages.”

“Well, there you are then!”

The harts all looked to each other with growing smiles. “That does make a great deal of sense,” Willow said. “We used to see them south of the wildwood all the time before we began protecting Conemara.”

Aspen nodded. “It matches Mayor Lickety Split’s report of the unicorns run off by our reputation, the weak-livered milksops.”

“‘Tis no wonder they rarely leave their gilded towers,” the Knave of Harts sneered. “I expect going without a spine makes travel difficult even with the aid of profane magics.”

The mare gave both of them a stony look. “A fortnight ago you didn’t think unicorn magic profane when it patched up your attercop bites.”  

Larch nudged her with an ankle. “Aw, don’t get your tail in a twist, now. You know that we didn’t mean you.”

“Yes,” said Douglas Fir. “You’re a unicorn but you’re not a… you know, a _unicorny_  unicorn.”

“Feh.” Heartstrings stomped back into her corner and flopped down in a crunch of leaves, her back to all of them. Soft yellow lit the shade as the first chords of _The Gloaming Glen of Yarrow_ began.

“I still don’t like it.” Dogwood peered down at Star Swirl, expressionless and still. “If we are so a-feared in the Kingdom then why does this one leave the safety of it?”

The stargazer took a cautious step away from Dogwood and his antlers. “I _told_  you, I wanted to expand the bestiaries and the growth of my knowledge is dear to me. Still, I cannot deny that the Kingdom’s borders drew in tighter than I liked and polite unicorn society bores me to tears. I’ve always had an itch for adventures.” Star Swirl ran his tongue over the scars stitched across his lips and flinched. The bleeding stopped days ago, but his muzzle was still tender. “Adventures or trouble. Either way, I seem more at home with wild brambles than rose gardens.”

The Knave of Harts grinned. “Say no more, I understand perfectly. Tis not the first time the Company was among well-bred unicorns with a bit of wildwood in them. Isn’t that right, Heartstrings?”

The strumming paused as the mare looked up from her lyre and sighed. “Look, we’ve been over this before. Not all unicorns are aristocrats. My kin are common as a cold and I’ve never had silk sheets or a diamond sewn in my saddle.” Heartstrings frowned at Star Swirl and his rich colors, the pink of his beard bright even under the wildwood trees where afternoon wore a gloaming mask.

She picked up the song where she left off, a simple melody that didn’t call much attention to itself. “Besides, I came to you as a minstrel and travel is my trade. I’m the exception, not the rule. Most ponies are tied to their hometowns by blood or tradition and they don’t leave unless they’re forced to.”

 “So not even the high-bred are free of tyranny, then?” The Knave blinked at Star Swirl with new eyes.

Heartstrings glared at him but as usual, this went unnoticed. The mare had done her part and as far as the harts were concerned she’d faded into the background with her music. Under the notes she groused to herself, “That isn’t what I said at all..”

“What was it, little fellow?” Larch tittered like a fawn, absolutely delighted with the idea of a rebellious unicorn. “Did you hear something you were not supposed to? Overhear a murderer’s plan or attempt a coup against Mohs? Did you attempt to revolutionize the system? Is that how you were banished?”

“Banished?” Young Douglas Fir looked up, cheeks swollen with feathergrass. “I didn’t know he was banished. What did he do?”

The harts were all staring at him now. The clearing buzzed with the question overlapping itself many times over. What has he done? What made him leave? What will he do now?

Star Swirl cringed under their eyes. He had prepared to speak of wonderful beasts and epic poetry, not his home. There was no time to craft an embellishment and he could see they wouldn’t be pacified without an answer. “Nothing that exciting, I’m afraid. I was supposed to be married and I did not wish to be, so I left. And that is all.”

The stags and the yearling looked at each other disappointedly but did not press him further, but the hinds all drew in closer, ears tilted high. There was nothing more romantic nor more rebellious than a discarded betrothal.

“It was done in the name of true love, of course,” Aspen said. Her fellow hinds all nodded in agreement.  

“There was obviously a sweet, humble mare that won his heart, perhaps a seamstress or a schoolmarm,” said Larch. “Would that not be adorable? A scholar and a schoolmarm separated by status but drawn together by devotion?”

Willow shook her head. “Nay, that can’t be it at all. Why would the little fellow have to leave his land if his sweetheart was unicorn? Even poor ones live in the kingdom.”

“Mayhap _she_ was the one who was banished?”

Aspen ran a tight little circle in her excitement. “Yes! For teaching revolutionary ideas to young, open minds!”

“And the little bearded unicorn went out to wander the world in search of her!” Willow fluttered her eyes and sighed, “Oh, the poor thing. He’s so brave.”

Poplar balanced on her hind legs and stretched her neck as far as it could so her little voice could carry. “D’you know what I think? I think his true love was an earth pony and that’s how come he’s come to the Nation to look for her.”  

“And that must be why he has the mark he does! Look, a pair of stars shooting in opposite directions.” Aspen looked back to Heartstrings. “That is what you said, right? The mark on a pony’s flank reveals their destiny.”

Heartstrings hunched her shoulders and pulled in her tail.. “Yes,” she said, “but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s—”

“Star-crossed!” cried the hinds. “He’s a star-crossed lover.” They all shared a lovelorn sigh as the Knave and Dogwood exchanged an irritated look.

Star Swirl himself was forgotten even as the hinds speculated the intricate romantic mysteries of his past. It was no use to correct them, they had already decided what he was. That suited him fine. Whatever wild backstory they created saved him from admitting he was the tangled knot in House Galaxy’s bloodline. The hinds’ version, filled up with renegade romance was much better than skulking away in the dead of night, the disgrace of his House trailing behind him.

“Speaking of romance, our own little Douglas is about that age,” Willow chuckled. “Maybe the two of them could pair together in the meantime.”

 “I’ll go off to find a herd of my own before that.” Douglas Fir wrinkled his muzzle at the thought of such a terrible engagement. “Besides, I can’t stand to be within a foot of him. There’s a strange scent upon his cape that chills the blood and pricks the nape.”

“Complain when you’ve had him in your antlers for two miles,” Dogwood huffed. “Certainly never smelled anything of the like before, ‘twas stronger in town and I’m glad to be away from it.”

The stargazer’s ears perked. _That’s interesting._

Like the Conemaran vet, the harts sensed him too, even while they were preoccupied speaking with the mayor and defending their couplets. Star Swirl wondered what they would have seen, had they bothered to look into the maple branches. _With no expectations of bald apes and more reason to fear him than a pony, perhaps they would have known him._   _The human would have been difficult to make out in the leaves, for deerfolk were never famed for eyesight, but one doesn’t have to see to know._

But look they never did, and so Star Swirl was alone with his insight. He drew it in and around him like a blanket; the privileged secret kept him warm and the intrigue of harts cooled his composure.

 

The unicorn shifted into his fortune teller voice, a quieter tone that sounded older than it was and trailed along the air like smoke. It was not as fascinating as Cozen’s eerie crackle, and it lacked the quiet, mournful power of the human’s tongue, but it did the trick well enough. “I could not say for certain what it is that you sense, for your nose is keener than mine. My hooves have crossed many lands, dear harts.”

Aspen, Willow, and Douglas Fir settled on their knees so they could hear better. Larch and Poplar peeked over his shoulder; the fawn’s breath tickled his neck.

“It could be any manner of creature smell caught in the silk of my travels. It comes with the profession of cataloging of all creatures fearsome and frail. I might leave foreign lands, but they never leave me. I have come far and learned many things, but I couldn’t say what it is that sets a chills even in harts brave as Dogwood. Why don’t we discover it together?”

Dogwood said nothing, but took an aloof step towards Larch, as if he’d only strolled in by coincidence. The Knave had kneeled next to the unicorn and offered a bit of his feathergrass.

Star Swirl was all too eager to accept it. “Now, perhaps you smell the scales of a quarray eel. It could be fur from the deadly manticore or an ursa major or even the carnage from a barghest’s kill. I admit, I did not see the barghest, for after seeing what it did to the minotaur I ran fast as I could.” He paused to savor the fresh grass’s sweet flavor. “Or it might not be anything so fancy and you just smell the rotting stink of timberwolf breath.”

“Ooh!” Poplar broke into a wide grin. “I know about timberwolves!”

Star Swirl ducked from the loud volume in his ears. “Oh, do you?”

“Yes, they’re made of enchanted wood and can put themselves back together again when ye smash them apart. Our wonderful Knave keeps them away, just like he does with tyrants.”

“Like he’d ever know a tyrant from a tambourine.” Dogwood mumbled bitterly. “He’s not left the wood in twelve seasons.”

Larch hummed in agreement.

“You really think ‘twas the barghest that killed the minotaur?” asked Willow. “Couldn’t it have been a dragon or something?“

“Well, it’s an interesting story, that. This happened while I was still in the kingdom and still a colt without a mark...”

The tale of the barghest was his personal favorite, for it was one of the few monster stories backed by a personal encounter and not just lectures from his teachers, and gave the story the delicious flavor of truth.

Star Swirl followed that with the epic poem of the Ursas’ war upon the Canis, and then sent peels of laughter about the clearing with a limerick about the ouroboros. When he went into the epic of Sonambula, even Heartstrings edged closer.  

 

It was early twilight when young Douglas Fir asked, “Did you ever see a woodwraith?”

His voice echoed in the clearing, quiet and alone, as if it had lost its mother. Some old instinct told the harts to pull in their herd and soon they were all in a tight circle, little Poplar blinking up from the center. The yearling flinched at his own question but there was no taking it back now. Their sacred, beautiful wildwood had changed. Suddenly it didn’t shelter them from danger, but left them blind to the horrors lurking behind the elms and oaks. They dared not move and betray their position. They dared not speak and miss hearing a vital snap of branches.

Star Swirl glanced at Heartstrings, standing just outside the circle, tensed more from interest than fear.

“Well?” It was Larch who finally broke the silence. “Have you?”

“Well, I—”

“Of course he hasn’t.” The Knave was louder than he’d been all that day. “He couldn’t have seen a woodwraith because wraiths don’t exist.”

Dogwood rounded on him. “Let the lad answer the question, he’s got his own tongue.” The Knave pinned the stag with a warning glance. Dogwood met it with a stare of his own. “The pony’s ventured far from his doorstep. He’s seen wonders and he’s widened his ken. More than could be said for certain cervine in this glen.”

“Have you heard what’s happened to the whitetails in the south?” Larch’s voice dipped low. “Their lead doe went missing this past spring. She went to the riverbank to sample pear blossoms and never came back. Her sons found what was left of her dangling from a tree. Her skin was gone.” Larch glanced down at Poplar, pressed close against Willow’s leg. “An elk coming from the mountains told me.”

The Knave stomped, more from frustration than at Larch. “Don’t be a fool. Anything dead for a week will lose its skin after the blowflies and ravens get at it. Even fawns know that.” He ran his eyes over his frightened herd and frowned. “Honestly, some empty headed whitetail down south stumbles in attercop web and you lot make a production out of it. That elk either colored the truth or lied entirely.”

“I don’t think the attercop like to live near the water,” Aspen said quietly. “Water makes their webbings sag.”  

“They don’t just leave their prey hanging about like that either. If the attercop got the whitetail there’d be naught left. And the elk described nothing like a web, ‘twas but one string, practically invisible.” Larch shuddered, then looked to her leader. “I suppose next you’ll tell us spiders know invisibility spells.”

“Can wraiths really do that?” Willow stared with wide, wide eyes. “Just spin an invisible string like that?”

“First I heard of it, but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit.”

“There is no such thing as a woodwraith!” the Knave called, but no hart took him to heart.

“The elk said the smell of smoke and ash was all about the place she died, though lightning never struck and it rained all that spring. The grass and trees were unburnt.” Larch nodded to herself. “A fire there and gone by unnatural means. If that’s not sign of a wraith I don’t know what is.”

“They call up bright lights to blind you stupid,” Dogwood added.

“Crying out in voices that aren’t theirs, they call and then you answer. They appropriate the cervine tongue to harvest hide and antler.” It was Poplar’s first successful couplet and should have been cause for celebration but the harts were too shaken to notice, Poplar included.

Hidden somewhere in the circle, Douglas Fir said, “Their skin’s bright orange, you know, excepting the head. And their eyes are big and black and shiny, like a dragonfly’s.”

“That’s if ye even see the woodwraith at all,” said Aspen. “They’re wraiths for a reason; ye’ll not know they’re there till the air cracks and they’ve hit you. Quick and from far away, all without touching you themselves.”

“No, they don’t use teeth. They don’t fight fair.” Larch looked at the Knave of Harts. “But we’ve no need to worry, for there is no such thing.” She began to laugh, a crestfallen sound that scratched her throat.

Dogwood’s eyes softened. He made a step towards her, but the Knave blocked him at the last moment. The great, old stag rested his nose against her cheek. She smiled at him, though it didn’t reach her eyes, still watching the dark beyond the trees.

Star Swirl’s cape jingled as he squirmed at the thought of the cloak he’d stepped around last night. The greyish brown one that covered the sleeping contradiction creature. The woodwraith.

But then he thought of the terror in Larch’s eyes and decided, _No. No, they’re not scared of humans at all._

Even the human in all his quiet and terrible power could never compare against what frightened the harts. He could step from the thicket at that very moment and they could know him for what he was and go on eating their flowers and feathergrass. But the human’s shadow... his shadow would send them screaming into the hills. The shadow was bigger than he.

“There, don’t worry, love. I’m here,” the Knave said. “I’m here and realer than any wraith.” He gestured towards Heartstrings, who plucked at her aimless lyre as she watched the wood. “Let us turn the mood with a song.”

The mare blew a puff of white mane out of her eyes and smiled. “Gladly! I came up with this lovely song the other day, about three jackdaws and a kni—”

“Maybe next time. Why don’t you play one of the Company ballads? Maybe _The Cruel Taxmare_  or, if you really must play something new, _The Knave of Harts and the Queen of Diamonds_?”

“But _Harts and Diamonds_ isn’t finished. The last verse still needs work and I don’t have the right cadence yet. Are you really sure you don’t want to hear the one about the jackdaws?”

“Alright, we will go with the classic. _Taxmare_  it is.”

The clearing erupted in a series of groans, sighs, shouts, and jeers.

“We heard that old thing fifty times this month!” Poplar wailed.

“Wake me when the song’s over.”

“You’ll have yourself a long nap, Willow. That ballad goes on for nineteen verses,” laughed Douglas Fir.

Dogwood waited for the herd to finish their complaints before speaking up. “Nay, Heartstrings. I think we’re in the mind to hear something older. Sing _Hark the Horned Hind_ , sing us a ballad of perytons!” He cooly stared into the eye of the Knave of Harts. “Sing us a _true_ song.”

The Knave lifted himself taller. He was eerily quiet as he looked Dogwood over. “Small bairn of Willow and the late Black Pine. Dost thou have words for ears or tines?”

The younger stag smiled evenly. His stare kept steady. “Nay. The summer still runs sweet and bright. The wind calls peace and want of olden ballads sung. T’was a young buck’s want for hinds’ hearts set light...” Dogwood ran his eyes along the ivy hugging the Knave’s antlers, down to the grey peppered on his muzzle. “But autumn’s leaf may loosen tongues. Winter comes, my Knave of Harts.” The smile faded away. “Winter comes, and all its parts.”

The stags circled each other. The Knave opened his mouth to respond when a lyre suddenly hovered in front of his face.

 

Heartstrings had to stand on her hind legs to be seen; it looked as if she’d practiced at it. “So! Since the herd is at odds for ballads, why don’t I just play them both? I can start with _Hark the Horned Hind_ and end with _Time and Tine_.” She looked from one hart to the other, grinning stiffly. “How’s that suit?”

The Knave of Harts kneeled down, watching Dogwood elegantly trot away. “That’s suitable. If it is to be a night for myths, I won’t stop you.” Larch, Aspen, and Willow gave him a hard eye as Heartstrings began the ballad.

The old stag flicked his ears. “Don’t you give me that look. The Horned Hind is a myth and you know it. A construct of folklore and the mind to settle nervous deerfolk and give them a bit of confidence. Nothing wrong with a myth, mind, but tis a myth, still. Hinds do not have horns and there is no such thing as an unkillable deer. Nothing is unkillable. Even dragons can be slain under the right circumstance.”

The song went on without interruption. Towards the end of the climax, when a fleet of arrows bounced harmlessly off the Horned Hind’s chest, Larch brought up her head. She looked at her herd with bright eyes, then looked at her own hooves. “The Hind’s no creature, Knave.” She was whispering, partly out of respect for the song and partly from the sureness of her words. “Nor is the white stag, the perytons, or the bleeding hart. All of them, they... they’re more. More than us.”  

 

Star Swirl looked up. He’d felt something.

The Knave shrugged with a yawn. “If you say so, dear. But you’d do better to trust in the test—”  

 

Something sparked in the unicorn’s chest. He felt it pierce his left ventricle, sharply cold, then warm. Warm and getting warmer. Was it getting warmer outside of him or inside of him? He couldn’t tell.

Star Swirl’s head swam; suddenly he had to sit down. No, he had to stand back up. He wasn’t really sure what he ought to do, but when did he ever? He felt himself trembling, though he was perfectly still. The warmth within him burbled and cracked in the hearth in his chest.

 _This has happened before._ It had been so long. _I’ve forgotten what magic felt like. Not felt it since I got my mark._

He’d called it back to him without even meaning to. Star Swirl pulled it not from intense study or meditation or scrolls but from the sighing of hinds. From the space between the cords of a ballad and from the shadow of a wraith. From the echoes of Rainbow light. He pulled it from the things that were real because they were not.

Star Swirl knelt on the grass, crippled by his own strength and laughing at the irony of it all. _You waited this long. Do what you will._ He closed his eyes; it was too much work keeping them open. Star Swirl felt himself grow steadily colder as the magic lifted itself up and out of him like sweat evaporating from his coat.  

 

“—stimony of your own senses,” the Knave of Harts finished.

“What was that light?” Young Douglas Fir lifted his head and looked around. “Do we have will-o-the-wisps in these woods?”

Poplar yawned, “See what? I didn’t see anything.”

“It was like a… oh, never mind. Probably just a firefly.”

Star Swirl looked upwards. The leaves above him glowed if they’d been drawn on the trees with a quill made of light. His horn had the same light around it not long ago; he couldn’t see it but he was sure it happened.

“I’ve done something,” he whispered to the tree. “I wonder what.”

Heartstrings finished _Hark the Horned Hind_ to a round of feather-soft hoof taps on the dirt, the cervine version of raucous applause. She opened her eyes as she started to thank her audience, but the words caught and died in her throat.

A shadow dripped into the clearing. A tall, black, tapered thing that twisted in all the wrong directions, balanced preposterously on two stilted legs as it reached out to the harts with the spidery claws. Another one joined it, its inky head peeking out from behind a juniper.

The scentless, senseless things stretched closer. The harts drew together, with the name of the shadows written on their eyes: hart-breaker. Skin-stealer. Wraith. The herd took a collective step back. The shadows slid further in, swaying on the forest floor as if underwater.

Dogwood’s eyes became very wide and he took a careful step forward. “That,” he whispered, “Is not a wraith. Not at all.”

The two legged shadow ended at the four hooves of a stag. He was a pale grey, eyes and antlers bone white. He snarled with a mouth full of sharp red-tinged fangs. Wings splayed out upon his shoulders, feathered in silver and white. A second stag with a dark grey coat came to join him, black winged with dark eyes and antlers.

“Perytons,” Dogwood whispered to himself. “I thought they’d all died.”

The Knave pinned back his ears with a snort. “The peryton is a storybook creature, thought up to embolden fawns and fools.”

The first peryton blinked once, then barreled into the clearing, scattering the herd to the corners. He reared upon his hind legs, flailing hooves flashing like the edge of a blade. His every move had lightning’s bright swiftness.

His brother came close behind, lifting himself into the air in a thunderclap of wings. The peryton passed through the branches unhindered, circling the harts a few times before settling in a branch above Star Swirl’s head. The edge of his feathers burned faint blue.

The unicorn stared up with a foolish grin. “I think I will have to add another bell.” The peryton blinked down at him, humming a roll of thunder and licking wolf blood from his lips.

“Look!” Aspen gave a little squeal of delight. “Look, they’re not alone!”

True to her word, another deer was coming from the thicket. A younger stag, comet white save for the endless green of his eyes. He came in dignified little steps as the boughs bowed to let him in.

From the other side of the clearing came a doe the color of fresh blood. A feathered arrow jutted from the white heart-shaped mark upon her chest, though the doe didn’t seem to notice it. She looked around the copse and smiled. The white stag and the bleeding hart touched noses and walked on. Aspen and Willow watched them with little sighs of wonder.

 Three more deer came from the wildwood, though Star Swirl did not know their names. A thin hind that dashed even faster than the perytons. A prancing fawn that couldn’t stop laughing at the whole affair, the laugh itself a rustle of jingle-bells. Poplar skipped behind them, giggling along at the secret joke.

Douglas Fir’s mouth went dry as the most beautiful hind he’d ever seen stepped quietly in. She glanced about, unimpressed. A sleeping fox draped itself around her shoulders as a living shawl. It yawned dramatically as Douglas Fir offered the lovely hind a dandelion.

Larch stood to the side all by herself. She watched the wonder go quietly by and smiled as her herd of flesh met with the herd of legend.

Heartstrings stood beside her, holding her lyre and frowning at the perytons’ bipedal shadows. The mare caught Star Swirl’s eye; her disappointment bit at him like a botfly.

There came another thunderclap of peryton wings and the legends looked up as one. One by one they stepped away from the Company to come together at the edge of the copse where they stood tall and silent.

The Knave cocked an eyebrow. “Hmph. I suppose that—”

“Hush.” Larch’s soft voice drowned him out. “For once, hush like a deer’s supposed to. Be quiet and wait.”

And there was the Horned Hind.

She had not stepped from the trees like the others did; she was simply there after not being there. The grass did not bend beneath her hooves but held her weight as if she weighed no more than a damselfly. She left a trail of morning dew instead of footprints. Little acorns grew from the tips of her tines. The only cervine that never knew fear, would never die, and could only be caught behind the bars of a song.

Larch began to cry. The Hartfelt Company formed itself behind her, stealing shy glances at the Hind. Only the Knave and the unicorns looked directly at her. The Horned Hind paid none of them any mind as she went on her way, golden and dancing and older than any of them, despite being born a moment ago.

Star Swirl felt something in the air drop as something in the universe tore itself open. A faraway twig snapped. The light from the Hind stuttered like a candle in the wind. The perytons and the white stag rippled and broke like water before righting themselves again, paler than they were before. The human was in the forest.

Star Swirl couldn’t say where he was, but likely too far to do the magic any more harm. That or the spell was too strong to break under his presence, but the unicorn didn’t dare put such high hope in his own skill.

The Knave of Harts marched forth with his voice high. “There! There, you see that? Stuff and nonsense!” He turned a wrathful eye at Star Swirl, still curled in a corner unable to move as the tip of his horn shone. “Harts, harts, can you not see through their pelts? Now do you see the glow of lies about their hooves and antlers?”

Larch was the only one who seemed to notice his cries. She passed an eye over him once, then at the streams of sunlight trailing from the Hind’s antlers as they scraped the sky. “No. I don’t.”

The Knave bucked his head and pawed the dirt. The golden hind blinked her large eyes at him curiously and danced towards him. With a great bellow the stag charged. He hammered down upon her with his will and solid hooves and four and twenty tines that led his herd for forty seasons.

The Horned Hind waltzed through him as if he were a bit of sunlight. She paused a moment, as if confused, then went on her way across the clearing and back into the woods. The perytons, the bleeding hart, the prancing fawn and the dashing doe and the white stag and the pretty doe with the fox followed close behind. One by one they faded into the forest, real as a rainbow.

“Wait!” Larch screamed herself raw as the rest of the Company joined her cries. “Please wait! We’re coming with you!”

Star Swirl barely managed to roll out of the way as the deer barreled into the thicket, ignoring the thorns and branches scratching at their coats. Heartstrings wavered at the great hole the herd left behind. She watched the perytons’ two legged shadow slide away until she could stand it no longer and ran after it with a strangled cry.

“Shadows!” The Knave called after them. “They’re naught but smoke and shadows and tricks, nothing real!” His voice echoed in the empty glen. His chest heaved with age and effort and sorrow. “Nothing real at all.”

Star Swirl creaked, “Even shadows need something real to cast from.” The glow of his horn had faded, but the light stayed in him. The simple delight of knowing he made magic made the unicorn laugh again. He was so giddy he didn’t notice when the Knave kicked him or feel the tines dig into his skin as he was lifted up. The laughter only faltered when he landed hard in the tree branch.

“I knew your sort was tricky, but to turn my own against me, oh, that’s a trick too far.”

The tree he’d been stranded in was just high enough for a tall stag’s reach but still too high to safely jump down from. The leaves around the unicorn still twinkled in their blue-white glow, as if the tree had frozen over. “I think you’re confused,” Star Swirl chuckled. “It's pegasi that sleep in trees, not unicorns.”

The Knave of Harts stood alone in a forest where winter had come early. “I am going to gather up my deer and send word to House Galaxy.” His voice was too low to have been speaking to anyone but himself. His dark nose twitched upon his snowy muzzle. “I’m sure we can fetch a decent ransom from your father at least.” The great old stag sighed and followed his herd, knowing that even if he found them he would not have them.

 

Star Swirl watched him go, quiet as he pondered his words. “My... MY father? My Da’s going to pay you? For _me_?”

The thought was so absurd and made him so sad that Star Swirl laughed until he ran out of breath and everything ached.


	9. The Tatting and the Tangles

“When does it become necessary to risk breaking all of one's legs?" Star Swirl wondered.

Above, the half-moon lit the tree tops. Soft bluish light from his residual magic clung to the oak leaves all around him. But below him, there were only vague shapes and figures in the dark. Down there might be a soft bed of leaves to break his fall or packed soil to break his back, presuming he didn’t bounce off all the other branches on the way down.

Star Swirl strained his ears for rustling bushes or a twig snapping under an artificial hoof. It was clear from the gaping wound in the magical atmosphere the human was still in the wildwood, but it was impossible to say where. He wouldn’t be hard to miss; one rarely heard the man coming, he often moved so quietly. The human might have been just outside the thicket, hugging the border, or gone through the wood in the wrong direction, bypassing Star Swirl entirely. All the tracking skill in the world wouldn’t change the fact that humans couldn’t see in the dark and he wouldn’t be looking for a pony in the trees. It was also quite possible he couldn’t see the glow of the tree, either.

_With the harts gone, none but I could claim I’d cast anything at all._  Star Swirl nosed a glimmering leaf. Proof was in the trampled forest and the glowing oak, but that only proved magic had been here, not that it had been his. He hadn’t cast a spell, for spells were under one’s control and done for a purpose. His magic never behaved, the rare times it appeared at all. He couldn’t tell it where to go, what to do, or what to be like a decent unicorn ought. The raw want from Larch and Dogwood called the Horned Hind to the same degree Star Swirl’s power did, if not more.

But, regardless of how it behaved or who it belonged to, magic had been with him for a time. Nothing else could have made him so happy or left him so terribly empty. He still felt where it used to be, echoing in the hollow of his horn. “Typical.”

The unicorn pricked his ears and lifted his head. There was a low sound coming from someplace he couldn’t see.

“Hello?” he asked the dark. “Is anypony out there?”

He could just barely hear it in the quiet commotion of rustling leaves and cricket chirps. A murmur on the air, delicate and wavering as if the voice did not know it was a voice yet. It sounded as if it were above him.

Star Swirl looked up, wondering if there were pegasi about. Something shone colorlessly in the moonlight. He stretched his neck to squint. It was just barely visible: a web spreading between the upper branches in a complex arch of contours and great swooping radials too large to have been made by a simple orb spider. His eye traced it back to the glowing oak to find a white cocoon barely hidden by the tree trunk. A mangled owl foot jutted from the top, talons clenched in tight fisted rigormortis.  

Something sharp stabbed the unicorn’s flank. Instinctively he jumped away, forgetting that there was nowhere to jump to.

The branch slipped out from under him. His hooves flailed in the empty rush of air. He fell several inches before he stopped with a jolt. The black expanse of ground swung and spun below him as he swayed in midair.

Something had his back legs. He wriggled and twisted about to find his hooves tied fast in a white bundle.

The murmurs came again, high with fright as it built into a solid whisper. "I'm sorry! Are you quite alright?"

A cast of spider silk spread over Star Swirl's injured flank until the pain faded, along with all other feeling in his legs. The webbing rolled over the lower half of his body until he was surely fastened to the tree.

"Hello." A grey spider the size of a ripe watermelon hovered on a silver thread a few inches from the unicorn's nose. Small for an attercop. "I _am_  so sorry to frighten you but I thought you were going to fall and break apart on the rocks. You were just so beautiful, I couldn't stand it if you broke." The voice didn’t come from her mandibles but the air surrounding her, the light behind her red eyes.

Star Swirl gawked at her in stunned silence. The attercop began to swing idly from her thread, the way a shy filly might kick her hoof in the dirt. Her legs twiddled in the air, unsure what to do with themselves. “I…I have never seen anything like you before. What are you, please?”

“I’m... um. I’m a pony.” Star Swirl frowned, unsure if he ought to be more frightened or confused. “A unicorn pony, to be exact.”

“You are a beautiful one, then. Has anyone told you that? Because you are.”

“Thank…you?” What else was he supposed to say to a spider? Star Swirl looked out into the dark wildwood and raised his voice to carry through the trees, just short of a yell. “I did not know the attercop knew how to talk.”

The thread gleamed brightly for a moment. She had no lips, but the attercop still managed to smile at him. “We cannot. We do speak to each other, but never in this way. Not with... words? I have never known a word before, but I am sure that is what they are called. I have words in my head, too. But I do not think you can hear them.”

The numbness in Star Swirl’s flank spread into his hip as the spider skittered along his sides. The silk cinched under his ribs like a corset. His front legs were still free, but he couldn’t move them.

Star Swirl’s mouth went dry. The bite from the attercop wasn’t dangerous in itself, it only paralyzed to give the colony time to swarm and drag prey into the treetops. He looked again at the web stretched across the branches. It didn’t look big enough to support an entire colony, but for every attercop you saw there were eight others you didn’t.

He leaned away from the spindly leg reaching for his face. “Are there more of you?”

The spider thought for a moment. When she spoke again her voice shook and it was softer than before. “I saw the sacs of my sisters crushed underhoof before the atterlings had a chance to see the stars. There was a tapestry here. It unfurled across many trees in sheets of spiraled silk, crafted by generations of mothers and daughters. Our art was unmatched. I am sorry you did not get to see it before the antlers ripped it apart. I am not sure why the stags did that. Perhaps they did not like it? We could have made the tapestry better if they did not like it. There was no need to destroy it. I do not understand… I do not know where the rest of my colony is, either. I have not seen them since they tapestry broke. I cannot find my sisters or my mother or my nieces. I think…”

The attercop curled her legs close to her body, unsure and confused. “I think I am the only one left. Sometimes I can feel something strange inside me but I do not know what it is called. It feels very heavy and it makes me hurt—not on the outside, but the inside. I do not like it. I do not like it at all.”

She skittered down to perch on Star Swirl’s nose. “Their names were Aranea. That is my name as well.” The attercop brightened when he looked at her. “Do you like it?”  

It was becoming difficult to breathe. “I think the word you...are looking for...is sorrow.” Star Swirl tried to raise his voice, but it wouldn’t go any higher.

Aranea tapped Star Swirl’s limp hoof with a curious leg. She moved it up an down, trying to work out the logistics of how to bundle it properly. “I do not enjoy this...sorrow feeling, then. I have never been anything besides an egg and an atterling—only recently I am an attercop, please forgive me if my spinning is not yet perfect—and until recently I have never felt anything but hungry, cold, tired, or wet.”

The attercop shook herself with a little squeak. “I do _not_ like being wet. Ruins the art. Oh! Oh, I see, the legs bend _this_ way. It is much easier when it curls against you and does not swing about like a stray thread. There, it is snug in your cocoon now and is that not so much better? No chance of falls now, is there? No, there is not!”

Star Swirl paled at the sight of himself trussed in spider silk. A scream welled in his chest but couldn’t find its way out. It trailed out of him in a frail whimper.

“Oh dear, I’m sorry. I told you I was new at this.” The silk pulled in tighter until Star Swirl’s breath came short and Aranea heard no more unhappy sounds from the pretty pony. She wriggled all her legs and clacked her mandibles, delighted to make him comfortable.

“I am less sad lately,” she told him. “I am less heavy and there is light inside—the pretty kind, not the bad kind that comes when the moon goes away. I felt it when you made all the deer run away from here. I think that is called love.”

Star Swirl raised his eyebrows.

“Look at my tapestry. That is the work of three and yet I have done it alone and in only an hour. I wanted to make it nice for you. I am very glad you came up to see it. I am nothing like other attercop because of you. I can sorrow and make words in my head. You made me do that, I think.”

Star Swirl blinked at Aranea’s thread. It hummed with light as she spoke; bright bluish white, the color of his magic.

“By the look in your eyes I can see I am right. That was so kind of you. You did not have to do that.” The attercop had finished her weaving and was now content to simply hover next to her unicorn. Her front legs stroked the underside of his jaw. “I understand why the harts spoke of unicorns so often. If all unicorns have half your beauty it must make the harts very jealous.”

She bundled the last of him in her silk and held him close. Only Star Swirl's head was left uncovered so the attercop could admire the starlight gleaming upon his horn. "Oh, my handsome little wizard. I do love you so."

Star Swirl could not remember the last time someone told him they loved him. He might have appreciated it more if not for his chest burning with every breath he took. His gasps came out in ragged little croaks.

Aranea sighed, though she had no breath. Her legs wound and teased his beard as if crocheting a little pink scarf. "Hmm, my love. My one and only love." Eight eyes blinked one at a time, each of them besotted. "I'm going to eat you," she cooed.

Star Swirl's eyes became dinner plate wide.

"Oh, no, no. Shh, don't fret. Marriage is a big step, I know, but it will be standard wedding. It will just be a simple liquefying of innards, nothing fancy. There's no family to invite, after all."

The attercop caressed the dark colors spreading in the unicorn's face. Even with wedding jitters, he still made himself lovely for her. There was not a better husband in any wood in all the world. She was so lucky. "I shall still lay my eggs in your skull, if that's what you're worried about. Never will you be forgotten. The daughters of our granddaughters shall know and love the arcs of your ears and the tip of your tail."

Star Swirl blinked slowly. He couldn’t hold his head up anymore and let it loll uselessly in the air. From this angle he had a clear view of Aranea’s tapestry stretched along the branches. The moon was caught in the tatting with stars twinkling along the filigree. _'It was kind of her to give me that view. It's some of Galaxy's better work._ '

“I am sorry if you feel a little uncomfortable. I promise you won’t hurt much longer, my love.” The silk about him wavered as Aranea sighed. “You have beautiful eyes. It will be a shame when the light goes out of them, but those are the sacrifices one makes for marriage.”

_It is in the spiders’ nature eat their husbands,_ Star Swirl thought _. I suppose she can't help the way she is._

The attercop was still talking but her words sloshed in his ears in a jumble of syllables that made no sense. A dark shape moved in front of his eyes, too big to be the attercop. The unicorn’s ear weakly twitched at a faraway voice. One by one the oak leaves lost their glow.

Aranea’s gentle voice suddenly wrenched into a shriek that flattened Star Swirl’s ears against his head. The pitch climbed so high he couldn’t hear it anymore. The spider legs dropped his head and skittered away. The attercop cried out again under a thick crack that made the whole tree tremble and Star Swirl swing violently in the air.

The great pressure on Star Swirl’s chest went away and grateful lungs sucked in air as his vision cleared. The first thing he saw was the attercop cradling a broken leg against her body, the rows of sharp little teeth behind her mandibles gleaming nastily.

 

The human crouched on a nearby branch, gripping the tree with one hand while brandishing his long staff in the other. His face was taut and contorted with a snarl of yellowing teeth, eyes smoldering under the shadow of his brow. A knife and a smaller iron dagger shone dully near his foot. The man growled low in his throat. A small shudder ran through Star Swirl.

Aranea made a sound like blades over a whetstone as she braced her seven good legs to jump. The staff cracked against her thorax, then again at her head until she cringed back, staggering higher into the oak. The human made another move toward the attercop before she skittered away, making the whetstone sound again; the attercop’s distress signal for the cavalry to swarm. She paused a moment, perhaps remembering her colony was gone and no cavalry was coming to save her wedding, before she retreated higher in the tree. The attercop darted into a knothole, eight red eyes glaring down at the hideous hairless wedding crasher.

“Are you alright?” In the time it took the man’s eye to look from attercop to unicorn, the snarling paragon of predators vanished and Star Swirl’s companion had returned. It was hard to believe both creatures lived in the same body.

“I... I believe so.”

The human sighed. “Good. Hold still.” The iron dagger slashed easily through the cocoon, now dull and colorless as any ordinary bit of string and sticking to the blade until it was coated in sticky attercop silk. Star Swirl just barely felt himself being slowly carried down to the little campfire waiting for him, his muscles still numb from the attercop bite.

Aranea peeked out of the knothole and watched him go, chattering at him in her soft, incoherent spider tongue. With Star Swirl’s magic dissolved by the human’s touch she was incapable of speech or coherent thought, no different from any other attercop that had never known sorrow or love. And yet she watched him so intently, even after he was too far for her to see.

The human set Star Swirl down in the grass, loosening the cape and setting it down in a jingling little pile as a pillow. The little pony was still gasping for air. The human leaned back on his heels and wrung his hands, unsure of what he ought to do.

After a few awful minutes of wheezing and limp hoof twitches, Star Swirl lifted his head. “Oh, good. You remembered to take my saddlebag along.” He pulled himself up by his front hooves to move toward it, the rest of him dragging behind like a sack of potatoes. “I’m going to need it.”

The human watched him totter about on trembling legs for dumbstruck moment before deciding to meet him halfway and brought the bag to him. Assured that Star Swirl’s health wasn’t in immediate distress, he took his clean knife and went back to the oak tree.

He stalked about the trunk, measuring what branches could support his weight and give him space to maneuver quickly. Attercop seemed faster than normal spiders and he’d need to move cleverly if he was to succeed. He’d hit her with the staff as hard as he could, but the most it had done was break a leg; perhaps crack her shell a bit. Hopefully the knife would be enough this time.

The human had his hand on the first branch when he heard a raspy “Wait.”

Star Swirl stared at the attercop’s tatting in the moonlight. His ears twitched at a dry little sound dripping down from the branches. It sounded almost like weeping. “Wait,” he said again. “Let her be.”

“Why?” The man blinked at him, then back up the tree, perplexed. “Are giant spiders dangerous to eat?”

“You eat _spiders_?”

“No, I’ve never seen one big enough to bother trying.” The human tapped the flat of his blade against his hip and grinned. “I’m curious how they are taste after a slow roast and I bet those legs have an excellent crunch.” He looked back and blinked at the unicorn’s unhappy face. “Besides, it tried to eat you first. It is only fair.”

“I’d just rather you didn’t. Besides, I didn’t think you ate creatures that spoke.”

“Giant spiders talk?”

“This one can.”

The human glared at the attercop’s knothole a few seconds before he let his shoulders sag and climbed back down. “Probably too much trouble to catch anyway.”

The human curled his legs up and sulked. He’d had nothing but bad luck with animals in these woods. The few quails and squirrels he’d come upon had escaped easily, their eyes accustomed to the dim light and guarded from pursuit by thick, cumbrous trees. The wealth of Conemara still stuck his ribs, with plenty of runoff food still wrapped in the pack. But his mouth watered at the thought of warm meat and he couldn’t live on croissants and cucumbers forever. With the attercop the human wondered if the local wildlife was learning to talk just to spite him.

Little deer prints were scattered all around him in the clearing, as if someone had laid out a dance pattern for him to follow. Judging from the number, more than the four harts he’d seen in town lived here—maybe seven or eight of them at least. How long could all that venison last him? A month? Maybe three if he rationed carefully? Either way, it did him no good now.

“Why didn’t you tell me deer could talk?”

Star Swirl looked up from his saddlebag. A jingling drawstring bag dangled from his teeth and a spool of thread lay beside his hoof. “I thought you knew. Nearly everything with hooves can talk. Ponies, elk, cows, minotaur, and even sheep and goats can talk, though the latter prefer not to.”

He considered further explaining that all creatures, from rabbits to rattlesnakes, could speak in some way. It was only a matter of linguistics and consciousness levels. The stargazer decided to keep that information to himself, suspecting things were complicated enough for the human, he looked so distressed.

“How do the griffons deal with this sort of thing?” the human asked. “Or dragons?”

“They don’t. Late in the war, the pegasi had the advantage of speed due to the griffons putting on so much... new weight. I do not know how it is with dragons.”

“Oh.”

Star Swirl pointed to the lump under the human’s pack. “You carry that cloak of yours around all the time, so I presumed you’d heard, or… well, she must have screamed at least.”

“No room for screaming in a snare. And I was sleeping when I caught it. Her.” The human rubbed the edge of his cloak between his fingers. He pushed away the idea of his cloak having a name and a family to go back to before the concept grew too large and unsettling to ignore.

“We might be able to find you a new cloak in a burgh up ahead.” Star Swirl fished out a shiny silver bell and held it up to the light in triumph. “It shan’t be expensive to have one commissioned; they aren’t in high demand in summertime.”

“Who said I’m getting rid of my cloak? I like my deerskin; it’s the first decent garment I made on my own.”

“Yes, but you could get a better one. Perhaps with a hood, so that you may attract less attention.”

The human lifted an eyebrow. “A bald sasquatch attracts less attention in a velvet hood?” The idea of a hood was actually tempting, but he wasn’t about to let Star Swirl know that.

Star Swirl huffed as he fought to thread the needle with the hooves and teeth, while keeping hold on the bell. “T’would be less… disturbing, at least.” He poked himself with the needle and flinched, nearly dropping the thread and the bell.

After the sixth failed attempt to thread the needle, the human reached over to help, but Star Swirl flattened his ears and edged away from him. He hunched over his cape and went on working, ignoring the human’s concerned looks. By the time the bell was stitched to the cape the moon had moved several inches across the sky and Star Swirl’s front hooves were speckled with pinpricks.

When finished, he wriggled back into his threadbare cape, and grinned ear to ear. The new bell tinkled, bright and shining and lopsided upon his chest. “I am no tailor, but ‘tisn’t bad for a little hollow horn.”

Star Swirl stood carefully, back legs wobbly and slipping under his weight. “Did you see how I earned it? I called it up, I called it without even meaning to, or else it called me, but the point is I made magic. Illusionary magic made from wants and wishes! The same thing that brought down the Old World’s Rainbow and were you watching? Were close enough to see?”

“I saw some light in the distance and a ghostly stag went by.” The human smiled at him. “That was you?”

“It was! I would show you, but...I don’t have it. I mean, I don’t have it at the moment but I can call it back.” The little pony wobbled into the gash of wildwood the harts left behind. He went so far into the trees all that could be seen of him was a pink tail winking in the firelight. Star Swirl looked at the sliver of moon nearly swallowed by the dark wood around it. “I _know_  can call it back.”

 

“Ye seem to do a good enough job of that already,” a familiar voice said.

Heartstrings stepped out from behind a tree, lyre tucked in the crook of her elbow. “I don’t see why you bother keeping up the perytons when no one’s about t’see them.” She walked towards him, eyes on the long shadow climbing into the dark. 

Then she looked up. Her eyes became very wide.

For the first time in her life, Heartstrings dropped her lyre.

The human peered out at the new voice. He stepped forward but paused when this new pony looked at him. Her huge golden eyes shone with tears, and when she blinked they cut a mint green path through the dust in her coat. The human put his hands in his pockets and looked away.

Star Swirl put himself between the two of them, but was shouldered aside. The rush knocked his weak hind legs from under him.

Heartstrings approached the human slowly. Not with timid wonder, but with the steady coldness of a mother whose child had come home four hours past curfew. Her withers shook as the brittle whisper cut through the silence. “Where have you been?”

The gap between them was closing fast. The man backed away as if her tears would burn him. It was an absurd sight; the creature that stood calm in the manticore’s thunder and nearly ate an attercop for dinner now cowered against a filthy little minstrel not even half his size.

“Answer me.” The human flinched as the mare’s voice splintered in her throat. “You wretched creature, _**answer**_  me!”

The human blinked and shuffled his feet, his hands still deep in his pockets. “I was… at home?”

Heartstrings shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. “Of course you were. You were at home while color faded from my mane and hope drained from my heart. You left. You left us alone and when we needed your help you never came. You’re supposed to come when we need you and make everything alright. We needed you and you were at home.” Her knees bent under the weight of years. She either laughed or sobbed behind a wall of white tangles. “ _Of course_  you were at home. Where else would you be?”

The human stepped forward and caught the mare as she sank down and his fingers caught in the mats of her mane as he pulled her into his arms. It was such a useless gesture; trying to hold someone together as they fell apart. But he didn’t know what else to do.

The mare’s horn flashed gold to push him away from her. The glow vanished as soon as it appeared but it was enough to make the human startle and release his grip. Heartstrings glanced at the spindles of brown fingers in her mane. She had the perfect view of nails nearly black with filth but still so beautiful because they were on human hands. The fingers did not smoothly flow through her mane. Instead they struggled in old dirty tangles like fish in a net. “It’s not supposed to be like this…”

She suddenly realized the human’s warmth was moving away from her. Before he could vanish she cried out and shoved her face into his tunic. Heartstrings twitched her nose at the musky scent, the same one she’d caught on Star Swirl’s cape, and softly began to cry again.

“I’m sorry you were alone,” the human told her. “It’s not good to be alone.”

The little mare nuzzled into him. Her horn poked into his stomach, but he didn’t seem to notice. “I hate you. You’re perfect.”

 

Star Swirl orbited the two of them, twitching his tail and uncomfortable in his own skin. Sounding more desperate than he’d have liked he asked, “Then you know what he is?” A foolish part of him stupidly prayed she had only seen a bald yeti.

The mare sniffed and stared at the green fabric stained with her tears. “What idiot doesn’t know a human when they see one? Especially one so absolutely perfect. And I...” She glanced down at herself and cringed at the grey in her mane and burrs in her fur. “I’m just Heartstrings.”

The human tilted his head. “Are you supposed to be someone else?”

“Yes. Well, no… but humans want to be with spritely fillies full of promise as they are, ones with ribbons on their tails and the sun in their eyes. Ponies fast enough to keep up on an adventure and beautiful enough to be seen in their company. Humans have no use for an old husk of a unicorn without even a song to offer.”

The man smiled lightly. “There is one thing I learned by leaving my city.” He lifted her chin and wiped her eyes. “You ponies don’t know much about humans.”

The mare smiled back with a little hiccup.

Star Swirl cleared his throat. “We really ought to be going. We have already lost a day of travel and there is still much ground to put behind us.”

The human looked up in surprise. “Now? But it’s the middle of the night.”

“A little darkness never hurt anypony.”

“Perhaps, but tripping over branches in the dark doesn’t sound very healthy either.” He sat on the forest floor, frowning at the paleness in Star Swirl’s face. “Can you even walk? Your legs are still shaking.”

“Why, of course I can! I have never felt better in all my life,” the stargazer wheezed. He waved the human off with a careless forehoof. “I only tremble in anticipation of our voyage. How much longer can the wildwood go on anyhow?”

“About four miles,” Heartstrings said. “Five, if you don’t know the way.”

Star Swirl’s nose wrinkled like a prune. “I was not addressing you.”

“Either way, it would be better to rest first.” The human was stretching by the fire, in the manner he often did before sleeping. “We can set out early in the morning at a brisk pace.”

The fight was lost. Star Swirl settled in one of the abandoned moss beds, annoyingly soft and welcoming under his weary body. “Fine. We leave at dawn and not a moment later.” He turned on his side, away from the sight of Heartstrings curling up beside the human’s bony ankles.

 

* * *

 

It was late morning in the wildwood when the stargazer woke. It was not a blurry trickle into consciousness, but a grim stab of awful clarity. The glen was empty, save for the lonely attercop eating a squirrel in the treetops. It was almost noon.

It was rare for him to oversleep, but the trees hid the sun and tricked him into sleeping far past schedule. They should have been on the road hours ago, and the human favored early starts. There wasn’t sign of him anywhere. Maybe…

Star Swirl grabbed his saddlebag and jumped to his feet, suddenly wondering how far the human could have gotten in four hours. Would he be out of the forest and on the road already or would the thick of the trees have slowed him down? Could Star Swirl catch up if he ran? Ponies were much faster than humans; it shouldn't be too hard… if he only knew which direction to go.

The unicorn scurried from one wall of trees to the other, gazing helplessly into rows of identical grey bark. Was the attercop rescue last night payment for the debt the human owed from the carnival? He cantered north, then thought better of it and went east, then southwest before looking north again. If the contradiction creature had left already without him, should he even bother to follow? It hardly mattered, Star Swirl would follow him anyway; he had nowhere else to be.

 

Then, he heard it on the wind. Three creatures were singing. The first was a meadowlark whistling a four note tune so cheerful it bordered on obnoxious. The second was a man's low hum and the third, the soft, vintage lilt of a mare.

 

_“As I was walking that ribbon of highway_

_I saw above me that endless skyway_

_I saw below me that golden valley_

_T’was this land, home for my mare and me”_

 

Star Swirl followed the song around the corner of the copse, a few yards from the hart’s clearing, and there he found them.

The human sat cross-legged in a spotlight of sunshine that shone down merrily from a great hole in the canopy and made his dark curls shine. Heartstrings was curled up in his lap, resting her head on his knee and singing as the human’s comb ran through her mane. Her coat shone in the sun too, the grime and filth gone. A string of geraniums and primroses and forget-me-nots had been woven into her braided tail. A wreath of daisies hung about her neck and a similar one sat upon the human’s head in a silly little tilt. Every so often there was a little snowfall of petals as he moved about. Tiny skippers gingerly kissed the blossoms as the meadowlark brightly sang. The only thing missing was a rainbow.

Star Swirl had walked out of the wildwood and into a tapestry. It was worse than being left behind.

 

“ _We roamed and rambled and followed hoofsteps_

_To the sparkling sands of the diamond deserts;_

_For in me sweet ears, her voice was sounding_

_This land was made f_ —ow!”

Heartstrings ducked away from the comb, gritting her teeth in a hiss. “Ouuuuch ow-ow-ow.”

The human smirked. “I don’t think that’s how the song goes.”

“Well, what do you expect when you start pullin’ a mane out by the roots?”

“Nonsense, I am only pulling the tangles out.” He paused to look over the pony in his lap and pulled out a twig. “Though those things might be one and the same. I’m amazed there aren’t any bird eggs in here. If I’m lucky these mats might tease out by next winter. Might.”

A wry grin curled on Heartstrings’ face. “It must’ve been hard work buildin’ a mountain from that molehill.”

Star Swirl flattened his ears. It had taken him a month to coax a genuine conversation out of the human, but Heartstrings had him chaffing in a matter of hours. He glared at the white victory wreath draped over her shoulders. It didn’t seem at all fair; she’d a thirty-year head-start making friends.  

The human fought the tangles gently as he could, gripping clumps of mane at the base so the comb wouldn’t pull at Heartstrings’ scalp. It looked as though he was strangling a cloud to death. His dark eyes glanced up before returning to the tangle. “Hello, Star Swirl. It is good to see you’re up. Your leg looks much better.”

“Why did you not wake me?” The unicorn approached him with a small frown and stopped a short distance from where the human and the mare sat. A black skipper freckled with yellow spots alighted on his horn before he shook it off. “We were supposed to leave at dawn, were we not?”

“I thought you could use the sleep.” The man sectioned a panel, squinting at a fraying knot that had mocked his comb for five minutes. “You never seem to get enough sleep and always look so tired.” He grinned triumphantly as the knot teased out and the comb cut a clean path. “Heartstrings told me the best way to get over an attercop attack is to sleep it off.”

Star Swirl swished his tail and scowled at the way Heartstrings leaned into the comb, now that the worst of the tangles were gone. She was practically purring.

“We decided to sing some while we waited for you to wake up, since she can’t play without magic. She knows lots of songs.”

“That stands to reason. She is a minstrel.”

“Oh, but not just pony songs, she knows some of mine. _Human_  songs like the ones my mother knew! The words are a bit different in places, like sometimes there will be ‘mare’ instead of ‘man’, but they are mostly the same. I used to play some of them on my violin before the strings snapped.”

Heartstrings brought her head up. “You should have brought it along, I know of a fine luthier that lives a little distance from here that does outstanding work. Cheap, too.” She ate a few stray petals that had fallen on the human’s shoulder. “I only hope you play better than you sing.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my singing,” the human said. “I think you ponies are just born with perfectly tuned voices. Not one of you is ever off key and you break out into song for no apparent reason.”

The human rolled Heartstrings out of his lap and examined the work he’d done. The tips of his fingers ran through her mane, looking like bits of driftwood bobbing in the sea’s white froth. “There. Far from perfect, but I don’t think I can get it any better than that. I suppose I should be happy it’s too short to get pinecones stuck in it.” With that, he plopped the daisy crown atop her head and sent her off.

Heartstrings admired her bent, rounded reflection staring up from the human’s bowl of water. She did a little twirl and flounced in the grass like a filly in a new dress. “Oh no, you did a lovely job. It always spikes an’ flares out in the front in that way, don’t you pay it any mind.”

The human nodded with a little smile as he picked out clumps of hair from his comb, letting them loose on the wind to catch on wildwood branches.

He turned to Star Swirl, sitting by himself in a sulk. The little stargazer watched him in the way a cat does, pointedly looking at him while not looking at him. The human observed him a little while, trying not to smile and failing.

“Star Swirl?”

“Yes?” There was a brush of forced nonchalance in his voice.

“Would you like a combing, too?”

The unicorn pulled himself up with his nose in the air, swishing his tail haughtily. He hadn’t set foot in the halls of House Galaxy in five years, but he could still don his noble airs well as any proper pony in the Kingdom. “I know how to brush my own tail, thank you.” If he’d no other vantage against the mare, he could still take comfort in his perfect lineage. “Unlike certain other ponies that shan’t be named, _I_  am quite capable of keeping airs in order.”

He opened an eye as the human began to put the comb away. “However, I am not opposed to the idea.” Star Swirl settled on his knees and moved his threadbare cape out of the way. “But none of that flower weaving nonsense. ‘Tis a waste of food.”

“You hate eating flowers,” said the human.

“Not the point.”

The human shrugged his shoulders and ran the comb through blue pony fur. “I think we will leave after this. I did some exploring earlier and found a shortcut. If we take it then the road is only a mile and a half east of here.” He paused in thought. “Unless magic makes the moss grow on the southwest side of trees or something ridiculous like that.”

“There are forests that consciously get travelers lost,” Star Swirl said. “But those are more common in the forests grown over ruins, and this isn’t one of them”

“I suppose you mean human ruins.”

“Indeed.” The shine came back into Star Swirl’s eyes as he explained, “No place is quite the same after your kind has touched it. Although, for an entire biome to react in such a way even so long after you’ve gone, there would have to be a great many humans living there once. I suspect it is the same for certain animals as well; recall the dogs of Conemara.”

The human took up the pink tail, pleased it was not full of sticks and pinecones and would not take three hours to comb. “How could I not? You left me in that tree for an hour while ferocious hounds drooled for my flesh.”

Star Swirl glanced back at him and lifted an eyebrow. “You mean the doe-eyed beagle and fluffy poodle?”

“That poodle had murder in its eyes. And you forget the monstrous black one and the terrible slim one.” When the pony just stared at him, unimpressed, he pointed out, “And roving packs of dogs eat people, Star Swirl. It’s a fact.”

“I keep telling you, the dogs you’re thinking of are feral dogs—look, the point is the wildwood is a regular forest. If the road is close then we’ve not wasted much time after all. The traffic peters out between the Nation’s major cities, we ought to have the roads to ourselves.” Star Swirl glanced back to observe the curls the human made in his tail. Instead of dragging listlessly, the tip of his tail curled upward in a gentle arc. “The bad news is the lands going north are fields and orchards and I doubt we’ll luck into another place willing to take in a unicorn and his bald ape. We will be sleeping in the open for a few days.”

“Can’t we sleep in the orchards? We could promise not to eat any of the fruit or bother anyone.” The human gripped his comb tightly and looked away. There were tight lines across his face. “I would rather not sleep on the ground,” he said quietly.

Star Swirl frowned sympathetically. “It can’t be helped, I’m afraid.”

It seemed as if the human had more to say, but he only sighed and ran the comb through Star Swirl’s bangs.

 

Heartstrings trotted over to them, blinking at the human with interest. “Why go through the flat lands at all? Where are we going?”

Star Swirl edged forward to block her path. “The _human_  and _I_  are on a quest.” He swished his coiffed tail. “I know not where it is _you_  are going.”

“Oh, you are? What sort of quest?” She nipped around Star Swirl’s barricade and peered over the human’s shoulder. “Are you going to slay the wyvern terrorizing Northhill? Have you been set to an impossible task? Or perhaps you are simply out to buy a telephone to go with your sports car?”

“We are going to see what’s become of the other humans, if I can ever chase this tick from Star Swirl’s neck. The end of our journey is an audience with General Yarak and his White Roc.” The human paused as he tried to puzzle out what a telephone or a car had to do with anything and failed entirely. “And I do not have a sports car, though my grandmother’s father had a motorcycle.”

Heartstrings jolted as a wave of fear ran through her. She took some time to think before saying, “You surely don’t mean the White Terror? The rapacious raptor that reduced the Griffon Empire to ruin?”

“The very same.” Star Swirl put his nose in the air again and smiled at the mare’s anxious discouragement. The human took this opportunity to comb out the unicorn’s beard. “As you can see, ‘tis a place fraught with peril we seek.”

“Oh.” Heartstrings tilted her head to the side and blinked her big gold eyes. “Then you’re going the wrong way, entirely.”

The brushing paused. The human said nothing and from this angle Star Swirl couldn’t see the human’s face, but he could feel the irritation stiffen his arm.

Louder than a dignified stallion ought to be, Star Swirl bit back, “That is entirely untrue! We are on the swiftest route to the Pegasus Hegemony, which currently drifts o’er the northernmost hills, for that is where the winds and rains are sent down. Madam, I have studied the navigational stars for years; tis nary a white dwarf or minor constellation that’s escaped my attention. I have worked under the finest cartographers in the Kingdom, and I would thank you to not impose upon my navigational judgment.”

 Heartstrings blinked at him slowly, unimpressed. “Well, my congratulations on your passin’ cartography class, then. But even if ye had a compass blazing ‘cross your flank it wouldn’t change the fact General Yarak’s not flown the Hegemony skies for at least twoscore years.” She leaned her neck over the human’s shoulder. “And if your lot ever stuck their nose out their ivory towers and took some scope of happenings with other tribes you’d know that.”

“But the pegasus tribe never ventures from their own lands unless they are either dealing out weather or at war, and they’ve not been at war in years. They’d sooner buck a dragon in the teeth than consort with other pony tribes.” Star Swirl glanced up at the human, who wasn’t looking at either unicorn, but frowned up at the sky. “The acclaimed generals spend their winter years nesting with their medals in a cirrostratus, regaling new recruits with war stories. Whyever would he leave?”

“Can’t say that I know. It might be some ponies too bold to go among even pegasi,” Heartstrings said. “And griffons are not the only ones that fear the Roc.”

Star Swirl felt a chill and pressed himself against the human. A pack of awful theories lurked in the back of his mind of all the terrible things such a pony might have done, hissing caveats of what a pony would want with humans. “A pegasus too brutish and fierce even for the pegasi. Heavens, could there even be such a thing?”

The human finished brushing out the pink beard—more trouble than it should have been, thanks to Star Swirl’s chatter—and took a moment to stretch his long arms and roll his joints. “If the general is not in the north, then where is he?”

“Last place anypony saw him was in the Caulkin Mountains, where rocks are harvested.” Heartstrings plucked an A-major on her lyre and recited, “An arching aerie the Earths compose; where hard rain falls, but grass ne’er grows. A pallid pall you must apprise, and know that these are Yarak’s skies.” The last part was muffled as Heartstrings took the human’s pack with her teeth and delivered it to him.  

“Why does it rain all the time?” the human asked. “Is it a droughted place?“

Star Swirl shrugged, still sticking to the human like a bivalve on shore rocks. “Who can make out the ways of the pegasus tribe? Not I, certainly.”

“Hmm.” Heartstrings twitched her ears and followed the human’s gaze to the jagged patch of blue, the treetops clawing at its sides like starving wastrels. “What will you do if they aren’t there? If the general turns out to be a snipe hunt or you discover that the humans have all...” She was not brave enough to finish and instead let the unsaid word lurk like a woodwraith.

The man realigned the stray strands in Star Swirl’s mane and leaned back. He scratched the little stallion’s silky ears, rubbing the little veins that branched through them. For a time the only sound was the sigh of trees and the gentle flapping of skipper wings.

“Then I will do as I’ve always done.” There was a gentle resignation in the human’s voice. “I will go on. What else can I do?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You have no idea how tempted I was to call this chapter Friendship is Brushies


	10. The Iron Tooth & the Oilskin

_It_ _is midwinter, maybe. It’s hard to tell sometimes._

_Winter seems to get longer with every year and inside the mall time seems to stand still. The kid figures it is still winter because snow muffles the light streaming down from the sky window and he must wear his fur coat at night so his shivering won’t keep him awake. Sometimes he wonders if winter is getting back at them for last year, when the light bulbs came alive and gave them an indoor summer._

_Soil coats his hand as he roots out little turnips from the garden, arranging them in a plastic basket next to the runty tomatoes. A garden shrinks when it comes indoors, but the kid knows that a tiny turnip is better than a frozen one. He is sowing seeds to replace the vegetables he’s harvested when he hears her._

_“Hey, kid. C’mere.”_

_He dusts the dirt from his pants and goes._

_It used to be she came to him instead, coming forth in her tall, quick way like a car rushing past. Ma always spoke to him that way as they loped in the shadow of crooked iron and crumbling bricks. Her syllables cracked like a whip and fell with her pace. The two of them never sat and talked; it was better to move when you spoke so you never wasted air or time. (“The world’s always moving, kid. You’d better keep up.”)_

_Ma uses his name all the time but only calls him ‘Kid’ when it’s important. She’s always done that, even when he rode in the papoose, strapped against her like a quiver. Neither of them really knows why._

_The cough started a few months ago. At first, they were dry and harmless as falling leaves, the sort that often come from chilled air and leave in a few hours. Except the cough never went away, and eventually came in_ _thick, swampy gasps_ _that tried to tear her chest apart. When those coughs came, his mother crawled into one of the mall’s many hollow holes and slept under the watch of pale faceless dolls that dotted the building._

_The kid wanted to follow her, of course, he was worried and wanted to help. But she’d seen that coming. She knew the mall, like the rest of the city, better than he did. She pulled down a thin, flexible gate from the ceiling, once used to keep out thieves, to seal her from her son._

_“You can’t come near me,” she’d told him. She only lifted the gate to get at her food and drink when it was brought to her, and only then when the kid was far away. Lately all she’s done is sleep. Sleep and cough and wheeze. The kid wished she would scold him for loafing around or scold him about his sloppy hunting._

_So now when his mother calls, voice lamb soft and briar rough from a cough-worn throat, the kid hears. From the other side of the mall he hears and he comes._

_She is where the kid left her, rolled up in a cocoon of blankets and pelts, just as she’s been for weeks. The only difference is the bars are gone and she's awake, looking at him. Tawny eyes huge and bright in her dark face, worn thin and haggard like January branches. A puff of dark, coarse hair branches like smoke around her head. The kid and his ma used to joke she should hunt at night, because her skin would melt into the dark._

_The bars are not there. She must have rolled up them up and tucked them away while he was in the garden. The kid brightens at first; it must be a sign that she is feeling better. But the wet coughs and the wheeze in her voice tells him she’s not._

_So then, why is the gate up? The kid’s steps become slow and hesitant._

_The kid’s ma leans against the wall. She sees understanding slowly unfold across her son’s face, making him look younger than he is. This conversation will age him, she sees that too. The mall is getting dark; dusk approaches and the kid didn’t scrape snow from the skylight yet, the lazy scoundrel. But even in the dim light she sees the shine of his eyes, getting shinier with every timid step he takes. The kid chews his lip, ducking his head into his shoulders, but he never breaks eye contact and he doesn’t pause once. She’s proud of that._

_A futile surge of maternal instinct rears up in her. She wants to comfort him for what’s coming and apologize for the hurt he’ll soon carry. If she loved her son any less, she would hug him._

_But love him she does, so when he is a few feet away she holds up a thin finger and wheezes, “That’s far enough.”_

_“Do you want me to get anything?” the kid asks her. He’s still growing into his adult voice and it often cracks. “The tomatoes came in good and I caught a rabbit yesterday. You can have them if you want.”_

_His mother shakes her head and sits up. She stares at him a moment and says, “Tell me how to filter water.”_

_The kid frowns, confused. He’s known how to clean water for so long he doesn’t even remember learning how to do it. “But I already know how to—”_

_“Tell me anyway.”_

_“Use a cloth or sand to make a filter. Or you can boil water instead.”_

_She smiles. “Good. Now tell me how to make a fire.”_

_For two hours she drills him on everything he knows. How to care for brooding pigeons, how to skin a hare, how to barricade buildings, how to greet newcomers and how to scare them away. How to pick locks and open cans, how to treat injuries, how to know when he should run and when he should fight. How to scamper up buildings without a ladder, how to set trip wires, how to mend sweaters, and how to handle dangerous animals and people. She drills him until his voice is nearly hoarse as hers._

_Finally, she asks him, “How do you dig holes in permafrost?”_

_Her child is not stupid. In their city there is only one reason to dig frozen ground. A sob wells up in his throat._

_His ma brings down her brow and stares at him harder than she ever has. “Don’t.” Her voice is a dagger, bright, sharp, and cold. “Don’t you dare. Not now. You do not have time. You still have things to do, you hear me? Listen to me, kid. It is winter. The river is frozen, the ducks and fish are gone, and you have to work.” Her bony shoulders tremble from effort of keeping her upright. “You are going keep your fires stoked, your birds warm, and your garden growing. It might be a cruel thing to demand, but winter’s mean by nature and neither of us can do anything about that. You are going to bury me and then you are going to water your garden, and then you are going to scrape snow off the skyli—LOOK at me, kid. Look at me. You are going to live. You are. Wait for spring. You can cry then. Not now. You will not waste your energy on tears. Do you understand me?”_

_“…Yes, ma.”_

_She blinks at him slowly and settles back against the wall. “Well, then?”_

_The kid takes a long, steady breath. “Go to the empty lot and build a fire. The fire will melt the frost and make the soil soft. I use a hatchet or a pickaxe to break it further if I have to. And then I get the shovel and I dig.”_

_His mother’s smile glints in the dark. “Good. Very, very good. I didn’t raise an idiot. Now, sit with me a while. We can watch the sun go down.”_

 

* * *

 

The human woke and pulled his arms into his tunic against the autumn chill. His breath came slow and hard and his chest was tight, as if someone had sat on him all night. It was also the best sleep he’d had since Conemara.

For the past month, under cover of cornfields and tall grass, sleep only came in small dozes and daytime naps. It was not so terrible after he'd gotten used to it. Being the last one asleep and the first one awake gave him long, lovely hours with his own self for company. He explored the land around him, found night birds to watch, or fished until the moon was pulled down by cornstalk fingers.

The morning the human dreamed of his mother, tawny scrub splayed as far as he could see. There was no cover at all and yet he’d slept from dusk till dawn. The Caulkin Mountains framed the horizon in a line of jagged teeth nipping at the sun. Both were very good signs.

Star Swirl sat in the grass not far away, half his face obscured by fluffy pink bedhead. He had his head in his hooves, glaring at his notebook as if it had offended him. After several minutes of grumbling, he put the notebook away and sighed.

The human rose and went to meet him. “Good morning. Do you know far into the year we are?”

“Week into fall, as of today. Harvest season started the day before yesterday for most of the Earth Pony Nation, unless my almanacs are wrong.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Why? Is there a deadline we need to meet? Or perhaps a human ritual that comes with the equinox?”

He shook his head. “It’s just that I think today is my birthday.”

Star Swirl nickered in amusement. “You think? You don’t know for certain?”

“I’m not sure of the exact date, but I know it’s a week after the equinox.”

“Many happy returns t’you, then!” Heartstrings rushed up behind them, fresh out of sleep, and nuzzled the human’s hand. “How old are you now?”

The human wiggled his fingers and did some quick arithmetic. “Five years past twenty. In another five years I’ll be middle aged.”

Star Swirl frowned. “But you’re only a few years older than I am. How could you possibly be middle aged?”

He just shrugged. “I’ve never heard of anyone in recent history living past sixty-five. Not that I know many people to base it on.”

Heartstrings shooed away this morbid talk with a flick of her hoof. “Nevermind all that, we ought to celebrate! We can have some fun in town, maybe fetch a wee cake—”

“I don’t think the locals are in the business of cakes,” Star Swirl pointed out. The human sagged his shoulders.

“A present, then!”

The human wrinkled his brow. “Why?”

Heartstrings laughed at that until she realized the human was still staring at her, quite confused. “D’you really mean you’ve never gotten a birthday gift? Ever?”

“I managed to stay alive for another year, isn’t that gift enough? I don’t think I really need anything else on top of that, and besides, there’s nothing I really want.” He blinked slowly at mares’ eager face. “...I’m getting a present whether I need one or not, aren’t I?”

 Heartstrings winked. “A bright one, you are.”

The human held up a finger before she could go further. “But if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not go into town and just meet you here in the afternoon.”

“All by yourself? On your birthday? Won’t you get lonesome or bored?” She spread a hoof over the field. “Naught but grass an’ brush out here.”

The human knelt to eye level, though his eye was not on the ponies, but the ground about their hooves. The dirt was pockmarked by tracks of animals that passed during the night. Near his pack lay shells from the bag of pecans he’d planned on eating for breakfast. “Pony towns are a bit crowded for my taste, Heartstrings. I’ve spent twelve birthdays alone, one more won’t hurt. I’m sure I’ll find something to do.”

He traced two fingers over a hoofprint in the dirt. It was cloven, but the dewclaws were set too wide for a deer and looked nothing like a sheep or goat’s. The edges were still soft. “Star Swirl, do pigs know how to talk?”

“I don’t believe they do. Why?”

The human grinned. “Just wondering.” No, he wouldn’t be bored at all.

 

* * *

 

Three knives he had.

The first was squat, broad, and jagged-toothed. Not fancy but reliable all the same. The second was a dagger, long and thin with all the hunger and meanness of a cornered rat. The third was longest of all of them, stretching half an arms’ length, was neither lean nor fat but a happy inbetween and the best of the knives. It was the oldest of the three, lifetimes older than the human, but it still shone bright. It only left its leather sheath when it had work to do, work higher than cutting branches or skinning pelts. It had only one job and it did it well.  

Three knives, all of them iron and fierce and clever and his. The human sucked in the brisk air and nodded to himself. _And three is a good, strong number. I only hope they’re enough._

He knelt in the high grass behind a grove of scrub trees listening to the pond water ripple. Through the branches he watched the rise and fall of a bristly hill as it breathed. The human hadn’t expected it to be this big. The pigs he’d seen in books were knee-high and smooth skinned, but the ridge of this of this animal’s back was just shy of pony height. The boar had no softness, save its shiny nose and eyes. The human had never seen a pelt like this before; he’d followed its path through a bramble bush but thorns didn’t seem to bother it at all. The tusks were nearly the length of Star Swirl’s quills. Pigs in books didn’t have those either.

There was no time to dig a pit, no good trees for snares or trip-wires and he had no nets. In retrospect, he should have brought his staff along. _I really hope three is enough._

The wind changed. The snout wrinkled in the air, then snorted it out. The boar lifted his head. The hard hairs along his spine went needle straight.

The human wished he knew more names of his ancestors, he’d run out of ones to ask luck from. Oh, well. The third knife winked from its sheath. Even if he didn’t have their names, one of them had given him this knife and that would have to be enough. Dust sprayed under his boot as he stepped from the trees and ran.

The rush of hooves split tawny grass like a duck on the water. The tip of the knife caught the boar’s flank as it rushed past. The human knew this not from the blood on his blade but the squeal. The hide wasn’t impenetrable, that was good at least.

The boar grunted low and charged. If there was ever a chance to retreat and catch rabbits instead, it was long gone now. The man skittered to the side and lashed out at the grey blur, but didn’t connect. He raised himself high and jabbed his dagger down into the ridge of bristles as a tusk dug into his thigh. The boar turned as the human flinched, driving the dagger deeper into its back. He clung to the handle and tugged; it barely moved. The human had missed the spine and hit a nerve instead.

The human’s foot slipped and twisted under him as he ducked away from the thrashing boar. Falling backwards, he bounced off a low tree and the ground knocked the air out of him. Instinct curled his body inward as he brandished his best knife, useless unless the pig body slammed him. He heard a low grunt and looked up to see tusks rushing to split his stomach open. The little jet eyes glittered, enraged. The thin little dagger stuck out of the bristles like an acupuncture needle. The ground rumbled and the air stank. The human wheezed and winced against the pain in his leg as he dragged himself some useless inches to the right and braced for impact.

A shadow passed overhead. A black blur fell into the scrubland and bounced over the boar’s back like a skipping stone, then arced back into the cold sky as the boar screamed. It happened so fast the human wondered if he’d somehow hallucinated in his excitement. Only when the boar flailed and shook its great head the man saw the blood and gory crevice where a beady eye used to be. Half blind and mad with pain, the boar thrashed and thrusted pointlessly, the creature it wanted out of reach. Above, someone laughed, absolutely delighted.

A griffon hovered in the sky, black furred, white feathered, and long in talons. He circled the human and the boar once, low enough to see the gleam in his orange eyes. The human stood on wobbling legs, still breathing hard, and scowled. Was this creature his competition or his own predator? It didn’t matter either way, he’d worked too hard for this boar. He found it first, he injured it, it belonged to him. And besides, he wanted his dagger back. The human drew his best, longest knife and braced his legs. This creature wouldn’t take his boar or his life without a struggle.

Grooves in the human’s boot dug into the dirt as he threw himself at the boar. The iron blade dug long and deep into the pig’s side. Not deep enough. The tusks wheeled about but the human was already darting in the opposite direction. He slashed a bristled flank as he went by. The boar rounded on him to charge when claws raked across its back.

The griffon veered low, waving his tail expectantly. He moved his gaze from human to boar and back again. A smile broke on the human’s face as he finally understood and rushed the boar. His knife slashed at the bristled sides. The human retreated and the talons came down. The talons lifted, the knife struck again. The griffon caught the boar’s ear and held it as the iron knife slid into the pig’s soft stomach.

The boar’s ear tore as it bolted, already under the griffon’s shadow and the human jogging close behind. He wasn’t sure if humans could outrun boars, but it hardly mattered. The human had a longer stride, better endurance and was uninjured. Exhaustion and injury did most of the work for him. The dark griffon dived lower, the grass hissing under belly fur until his running paws met the ground.

Ahead, the boar stumbled. The hunters met eyes, nodded, and picked up speed.

The animal was tackled from the left and pinned to the grass, talons digging into its face like a vice, keeping those tusks at a safe distance. On the right fell a two-legged shadow and a metallic gleam. For an eternal second the air was alive with squalls and struggles and stank of blood, sweat, and upturned earth. The knife older than all of them struck the boar’s heart and it was over.

The human’s legs wobbled as he crouched, leaning on his arms as he caught his breath. All at once his thigh remembered it had been struck, his legs remembered it had been weeks since he last sprinted and the chill came back into the air.

The griffon’s red and white head peeked over the boar’s shoulder and watched him recover. His yellow beak lingered close to the dead ear as if sharing secrets, talons flopped lazily over the bristled chest. “You are not bad, little lord. Have you never killed a pig before or are you simply out of practice? When you attacked the spine, I wondered if you had missed or were only a novice. Speaking of which…”

The stiletto dagger sailed over the corpse, landing at the human’s feet. “There you are! Your iron tooth, blunted but otherwise safe and sound. It’s a foolish venture to attack a creature when you are not prepared, but you are also quick and fierce and not an idiot. Of course, you may not be foolish at all, only very brave. There is often little difference with your sort, if you don’t mind my saying so. Now! Heads or tails?”

The man stared up at him for so long the griffon began to wonder if he should try another language. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Do you want heads or tails? Top or bottom? I did a great deal of work, but you were there first and you are the one that killed it, so you get to choose. You may also slice him open if you like, but I’d be better suited for it. But I lay claim on the heart. For as much work as I put in, I’ve a right to it.”

The human made a face. “You’re welcome to it. You can have most of the organs if you want if I can get most of the meat.”

“Your call, but my father always told me with a warm pair of eyes in your stomach you’ll never miss what’s coming.” The griffon swished his tail distastefully. “Then again, if I remember right, it’s the custom of your folk to burn all the blood and flavor out of your food.”

The man’s head bobbed up to meet the griffon, nose to beak. “You know of my folk?” From the airs of happy novelty radiating from the griffon’s feathers, he suspected the answer already. In unison, they both said, “From songs and stories.”

The griffon’s feathers puffed at his shoulders, giving him the look of wearing a frilled collar and he made a tittering whistle. “Yes, indeed. Lanky bald things with no claws but plenty of mettle that ruled the world. How you did it I don’t know and I’m not sure I want to.” He nosed the boar onto its back, slid his claws down the soft belly and split it open like a messy parcel. Steam rose into chilled air and the griffon clacked his jaw in anticipation. He made the whistling sound again and rooted his face in the boar’s chest. “But any beast so puny that holds a grand lordship like that is worth remembering, don’t you think?”

The man smiled. “I think so, yes.” He took his broad toothed knife and joined in the red harvest. “Is that why you decided to help me?”

“’Course not. I’m not in the business of charity. You want to get yourself gored that’s your business. I don’t think you know how to fly, I could have stolen off with your pig and I don’t think there’s much you could have done about it except screw up your face and stomp your feet.”

The griffon’s great black wings flapped madly as he struggled with the rib cage, finally tugging out a great red mass. All his feathers puffed with delight as he rolled the heart around in his mouth, then swallowed it whole. “Ahhh, that’s the stuff. Let me remedy your question with one of my own: why did you set out to kill this big mean fellow here? There are shining fish in the pond, fluffy bunnies in their holes, and fat geese in the sky. Why this one?”

The human, up to his elbows in sticky redness, glanced up and said, “I was sick of rabbits and I’d never eaten a pig before. I didn’t think it’d be so…” With a sweep of his hand he summed up the fallen creature: bristled armor, steadfast legs, tinderbox temper, scimitar face. “So _this_.”

“But you must’ve gotten a good look at him before you ran at him. You could have changed your mind. It would have been smarter to change your mind.”

“What, I’m going to spend all morning tracking it and just turn back? The boar was there and I still thought I could do it so I did it. You shouldn’t start something unless you intend to finish.”

The griffon nodded to himself. “And that middle reason was mine. I saw your hunt, it’s been some time since I ate boar, and it has been so long since I hunted with a partner. My nestmates are no fun, they don’t like hunting land creatures anymore. I ask you, what’s the point of having legs if you never stretch them?” He craned his neck down in a conspiratorial whisper, “I think they’re all just frail in the gizzard on account of rumors of rocs.”

The human glanced at him, slightly amused, and went back into his work. He fetched his pack, still safe in the stubby mostly useless trees, where kindling and a carving knife waited for him. As the griffon tittered and growled in delight of lungs and livers, the human carefully built his fire and roasted his meat. For a time, neither of them spoke and enjoyed the simple pleasure of their spoils. Neither of them acknowledged the gathering audience of buzzards and a fox that watched and waited for them to finish.

"We are much the same, I think," said the griffon.

"Oh?" The human did not look at him but frowned at his poor carving knife. It was very good for harvesting does and hares, not so much for tough boar skin. All of his knives suffered and dulled today. "How'd you figure that?"

"Why, look no further than what surrounds us, little lord!" He snapped up some entrails and shook excess blood from his feathers. "Observe this scrubland; observe what we two have painted in the glory of our hunt. The crimson tinge on the grass and the scarlet trail that drags behind us, the stickiness squelching beneath our feet. Together we are red and full and happy. We are proud in our talons and iron teeth, as well we should be. It is no easy task to conquer a boar of this magnitude baring tusks longer than winter." The griffon rolled his shoulders and stretched his long body in the sun. "By the by, were you going to take those? The tusks? I think your sort likes to collect things from what they kill."

The human poked the long yellow tusk and flinched at the sharpness of it. If he had dodged in the wrong direction, a different creature might be strewn out in the grass right now. "I don't know. I don't make many things and this is the first time I've killed a boar. I might make a knife, but I have enough of those. You can have them if you like."

 "Fierce _and_  generous. What a lucky fellow I am." The griffon took a tusk in his beak and with a few short tugs it came away. "The creatures who could best us are few, especially when we travel in numbers. And yet, for all our boldness, we two have lost our lands to bright little flat-toothed ponies."

The man chewed his meat with no response or opinion but something flickered in the human’s eyes, wheeling away and burying itself before it could be seen.

The griffon saw, of course. They see everything that runs. “See those snaggle-tooth crags in the distance?”    

“You mean the Caulkins,” the human said. “I’m bound for them.”

“Are you? Interesting.” He washed a paw with his greyish pink tongue. “The mountains you call Caulkin, the red scrub you see about you, they belonged to my clan not long ago. My great aunt fought three days and three nights to win it. My father was hatched there, as was his father before him. My nestmates and I were conceived there, yet we were born many, many miles away. This is the second time I’ve seen these lands now ruled by ponies.” The griffon snatched the boar’s liver and shook it a few times before swallowing. “Ponies of the _earth_ , no less.”

“Do you resent them for it?”

The crest of feathers fluffed and fell at the griffon’s neck. “Sometimes. But I am not a sore loser. That is simply the result of lost wars. The pegasi won the crag and by right they may do what they wish with it. If they wish to waste it on wingless nags, that’s their business. There is always the chance of reclamation, after all. We may win it back one day, we may not. Time will tell.”

The griffon hopped over to the human’s side of the boar. Side by side, the human had a new appreciation for his size. The two of them sat exactly at eye level. “If you ask me, if either of us should be upset it is you. Your kin claimed this place before mine and far, _far_  before the uppity little horses. They galloped over your continents in rainbow herds and simply took them for their own. But you lost no wars, you had no quarrels, you laid no wagers. I don’t think you even had the chance to defend what was yours. It is a disgrace.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t done on purpose,” the human protested.

“An egg dropped by accident still breaks.”

“There’s no fault in living in abandoned houses. The world changed, that’s all. Looking at pony towns, even I sometimes forget the land used to belong to someone else. The world’s changed,” the human repeated. “It happens.”

The griffon’s orange eyes fixed on the human’s, storm cloud wings slowly spreading behind him. “And who changed it, little lord? Who charts the moon’s course? Who tells the grass to cover your cobblestones? Who calls down the rain to rust your iron and flood your streets?”

The human had no response for that.

“I have seen it, you know. I have seen the iron towers where your kin once feasted and played and nursed and murdered and built. It still stands, but the little ponies grow bolder, explore it further, smother the pavement with grass, and rot the place with each hoofprint. It is a day’s walk from here; you ought to visit before the kudzu strangles it.”

The griffon fished around what was left of the boar, harvesting what spare parts he’d not eaten and gathering them tightly his paws. The buzzards broke and scattered as he beat his wings once and rose into the air. He squinted at something in the distance, growled low in his throat, and then looked back down.

“Believe what you wish of the ponies, your life and feelings are your own. But I think you know better. Go to the Caulkins, little lord. Know that I wish you all the luck in the world.” He glanced over his shoulder at the snaggle-toothed crags in the distance. “You will need it.”

The buzzards filled the hole in the sky where he once had been. They waited until the griffon was a safe distance before they eased into the grass.

 

* * *

 

Heartstrings leaned in her seat, happily counting the coins on the table. She still had plenty left over, despite the high price of the human's gift. The wonderful thing about minstrels was they were constantly in demand. Not everypony on the road needed fortunes told or fences mended, but there were always songs somepony hadn't heard since foalhood or a mare whose spirits needed lifting or a colt who longed for news.

Arriving in the midst of harvest season didn't hurt either. You'd be hard pressed to find a grouchy earth pony during harvest season. It was likely the reason why the price was such a bargain, considering the crazy inequine measurements.

"Pardon me." A freckled apprentice not grown into her mark peeked over Heartstrings' shoulder. "It’s almost done, ma’am. Miss Gabardine sent me to ask about the color. You never specified."

Heartstrings frowned. She was confident in her choice of cloth in the way of length, weight, and versatility, but had no idea what colors the human favored. "Hmm. Star Swirl?"

Star Swirl turned a page with his nose. He tapped a hoof on the table, glowering at the notebook and muttering to himself. Something about rainbows and witches.

"Star Swirl."

Silence. More page shuffling and hoof taps.

Heartstrings tapped his horn tip. "Star Swirl!"

"What." His eye never left the page.

"What sort of colors does he like?"

A minute passed. Then two. Heartstrings asked again, in case he hadn’t heard.

Star Swirl shrugged. "Color's fine."

“Tisn’t what I asked, lad.”

“Okay.”

Heartstrings sighed. It was like pulling teeth with this colt. She’d never managed to wrench more than six syllables from him. When they traveled he was always on the human’s opposite side and giving off snide looks when he thought nobody was looking. Heartstrings tried friendly conversation, smiling, singing ballads, apologizing, antagonizing, sharing food, complimenting his coat, and complaining about the weather. She was lucky to get a side glance. The way he went on, a pony would think she’d dropped his cat in the well and set his estate on fire.

For a time, Heartstrings worried that she’d done something to upset him. The fancier unicorns were so easy to offend, after all. They’d a thousand rules for politeness and ten thousand ways to break them and the rules varied depending on the family’s rank.

But it wasn’t just Heartstrings. Star Swirl gave the barest of minimum of attention to every pony he came across before diving back into his notes or taking shelter behind the human. The human was the only creature he ever spoke to or smiled at. It was getting old.

Heartstrings stuck her neck over the table as far as it would go. “Ahem.”

Star Swirl blinked slowly at the sudden shadow over his notes. His ears flattened against his head as he rolled his eyes up at her. A sigh dragged out of him. He arched a condescending pink eyebrow. “Is there something that you want?”

“I asked what colors the human liked.”

He blinked. “Why?”

Heartstrings inclined a hoof towards the tailor’s shop where they sat. “Garments have colors. We need to choose one. I thought you’d know what colors he favors, since you’ve known him for longer.”

“Oh.” Star Swirl buried his nose in the notes again. “He likes green.”

The apprentice nodded and dashed into the backroom.

Heartstrings sighed. She strummed her lyre, eventually easing into the opening chords to _The Flutter Queene’s Court_. Good choice of song. Just long enough to fill another hour with nopony to talk to.

 

* * *

 

"Ah, now that’s a sight!" Heartstrings held the gift high with her magic and rubbed her cheek on the lining. “Oh, and the inside’s softer than a bonny bairn’s ear. Isn't it wonderful, Star Swirl?"

Star Swirl mumbled through the pen in his teeth.

The tailor adjusted her monocle. "Indeed. Oilskin is the wisest choice for a promenade through the Caulkins. The lining ought to be enough to keep the cold out, come winter. 'Course, it'd be wiser to not go at all, but there's no reasoning with fools." She shook her head. "Weather’s a beast up there; random rains, lightning going every which way, winds that don’t know if they’re breezes or maelstroms, sleet for no good reason. The pegasi up there just laze about all day letting clouds do as they please and the Hegemony still has the nerve to take rations from the rock farmers. Letting the snow wassets crawl all o’er the place. ‘Tis a disgrace.”

Heartstrings only hummed brightly as she placed the present in her saddlebag. “We’ll keep watch for that, then. Look alive, Star Swirl. We’re off.”

Fifteen minutes past the city walls, Star Swirl seemed even quieter than usual, if such a thing was possible. He bent his neck at the sky as he walked, the line of his mouth lopsided and wrinkled.

Without looking from the sky he asked, "What is magic?"

Heartstrings knitted her brow, pulling her saddlebag close. She could not tell if this was an accusation or if the lad was asking himself rhetorical questions. “You should know the answer t’that already, methinks. That’s your house’s whole purpose, isn’t it? Spells and stars and the like. Don’t know why you ask the likes of me.”

Star Swirl snapped his eye to her. “Humor me, then.” He thought a moment and added, “Please.”

Heartstrings shrugged. “I never put much thought on it, t’tell the truth. I know it’s something a unicorn uses to move things about and I know that I use mine for making music, mostly. I know the sweet joy it gives me every day and the warm, smooth tingle in my horn with each lyre pluck.” She nodded to herself. “It’s a good feeling. Like going home.”

 “And what else?” Star Swirl was looking directly at her now, his desperate eyes framed by dark circles. It made him look twice his age.

The old mare twitched her ears, confused. “What else? What else is there?”

Star Swirl shook his head with a scowl and a sigh. “I thought as much. _Typical_.”

“Oh? And what’s that supposed t’mean, then?”

Star Swirl rolled his eyes at her and scoffed, trotting on ahead.

Heartstrings flattened her ears and dashed to catch him. She dug in her hooves, abruptly cutting him off. “Look here, ye wet-eared stripling. I may not have good breedin’ and ye might not enjoy me company but that gives ye _no_  right to treat me like some common coxcomb that spat in your oats.” She gave an unladylike snort. “Don’t give you rights to lure me into questions ye already know I don’t have the answers to either.”

Star Swirl flicked his tail and shook his head with a dismissive sigh. “You’re right. T’was a mistake to even ask.”

“Why? Because I’m too ignorant t’give answers you’ll accept?”

“Yes!” he snapped. “Yes, that is precisely why. You and every other glass-eyed pony in the Kingdom. Ignorant and... and glad of it!”

“That’s tall words for a hollow unicorn, Star Swirl.” She edged her face close enough for them to bump noses. “Come, _soothsayer_ , why don’t _you_  lecture me on what magic is?”

Once that might have hurt Star Swirl, but he'd long since accepted his lot in life. It sat upon his shoulder, whispering as he studied through the night. _Hollow_. He heard it in the scratch of quills on parchment. He tasted in the binding of books he carried, not levitated. He saw it in the piteous eyes of those who knew but never spoke of it. _Hollow. Hollow. Hollow._  

But with his every movement, Star Swirl knew better. His bells twitched in the breeze whispering, _You are not. You are not._

Still, to hear it aloud from Heartstrings made him shrink into his cape. He kicked into a canter, his ears full of his own hoofbeats and tinkling bells. He glanced to see the seafoam-colored pony not far behind. To Heartstrings or to himself, he said, “I cannot tell you what magic is. Not truthfully. I don’t think anypony can.”

Star Swirl looked at Heartstrings again, his face too old and his eyes too young. “Listen,” he said. “House Galaxy’s studied and practiced magic for longer than anypony can remember. My parents studied for decades. I studied magic for years. All I learned was this: we have _no idea_  what magic is. None. Because we do not care to find out.”

His canter kicked into a gallop, as if he could outrun his frustrations. “Ponies believe magic is for moving the sun, the moon, the quill, the needle and the thread. Magic is always practical; it must always do something, accomplish something and what it accomplishes must always be useful. Magic is never allowed to _be_. Magic is never for magic’s sake.”

Heartstrings panted to not lose sight of him. “What’s the matter with that? Isn’t practicality enough?” She practically had to yell over the wind and distance. “We’ve what we need already. Why seek more if we’re content?”

“That’s the problem! Right there! We are content to languish in ivory towers and till our fields and harvest our raindrops and nothing more. And we never aspire to _be_  anything more. We know our purpose when it etches itself on our flanks and we are content. Content in...” Star Swirl faltered, short of breath. “Content in a sterile vase where nothing grows. We move the heavens with magic, yes. But what else can magic do? Without set purpose what will it do? In fact, why have magic at all? Humans were fine without magic, so why do we have it? Magic mends stitches, plucks lyres, and lifts inkpots. What else? What is magic _for_?”

Star Swirl slowed to a walk. He didn’t have the stamina for long gallops even on a good day; ranting theses on top of it left him burnt and gasping. The chilled air clawed his throat as his thin barrel heaved. Star Swirl plopped in the grass and waited as the mare caught up with him. “I think... I think that is what I really want to know. What is the purpose of wizardry, Heartstrings? What’s magic for?”

“I can’t say that I know, lad.” Heartstrings stood above him, breathing hard but far from exhausted. “I hope ye aren’t plannin’ another sprint like that anytime soon. I don’t think either of us are the athletic type.”

“Why... why aren’t you tired? Aren’t you thrice my age?”

Heartstrings grinned. “I jogged. What, you think I’m running meself into the ground just because you are? Runnin’s for colts and fillies, they’ve all the time in the world and everywhere to be. I have half your time and nowhere to be, so I can take all the time I please. We’re going to the same place, after all.”

 Heartstrings looked behind as they went on into the scrub. “We covered a grand distance with that exercise. We’ll be back at camp soon. Before we get there, I’ve a question of me own.”

“And that is?”

“Who is Pyrite?”

The stallion’s pink eyebrows shot up.

“So you know of him?”

“I worked under him for three years. A wretched old cob who’d no fiefdom so he lorded over a carnival instead. Pinned titles to himself like store bought medals.” Star Swirl chuckled to himself. “Called himself ‘the Bold’. Titles are only earned or given, never chosen, and the truly great unicorns are titled for what they wear or how they speak. It’s supposed to keep us grounded. I thought of telling him he’d chosen a foolish title but I was happier with my jaw unbroken.”

It was Heartstrings’ turn to raise her eyebrows. For the first time she noticed the notches in Star Swirl’s right ear and the unusual scars upon his muzzle.

“He didn’t much care for me. Cozen told me it was because I smiled too much and my coat was too bright. Nothing his carnival touched came away happy. He was the sort of pony that only wore a smile after stealing yours.” Star Swirl flicked his ears in thought. “After a certain point, some ponies give up on their happiness or their futures and take comfort in dragging down everyone else’s instead.”

“Where is he now?” Heartstrings asked.

“Last I saw he was in the jaws of a she-manticore. Why?”

Heartstrings ducked in closer and lowered her voice, as if the grass had spies. “On the night I met the human he kicked me out of my sleep. He kicked so hard, I think he might have broken one of my ribs if he hadn’t gone to bed without shoes. I looked to find the human thrashing in his sleep like a hooked trout. I had my horn lit t’see what was happening, but when he saw me.... ”

She looked over her shoulder guiltily. “Star Swirl, I never knew that a human’s little eyes could stretch so big. He pulled in all his arms and legs like I was going t’steal them, buried his face in his knees and he wouldn’t stop shaking. I was afraid he’d suffocate, he was breathing so hard. I’m amazed it didn’t wake you. As I tried to calm him down, he demanded of me where Pyrite was, though in the middle of doing so he seemed to remember he was safe in the wildwood. Still, his fingers didn’t leave his neck until he fetched the comb and gave his hands something else to do.”

Star Swirl hummed to himself, remembering the human’s aversion to sleeping on the ground.  

Heartstrings swished her tail. A few blossoms were still braided into them. “I tried playing songs to ease him, but he cringed from my horn’s light like attercops in the sun.”

Star Swirl pricked his ears. Now that he thought on it, the human always held his staff close whenever Heartstrings played her lyre or levitated objects. After the first week together, Heartstrings and her aura moved out of the human’s line of sight when she played. He remembered the relief upon the human’s face as he discovered he could break spells with a touch.

The unicorn paused mid-stride and fiddled with his beard. “He’s scared of magic.”

“Aye.”

“‘Tis poor choice of phobias.” Star Swirl sniffed the flax flowers at his hooves. Flax didn’t grow in these lands twenty years ago. Princess Tourmaline sent baskets of flax seed and indigo to the Earth Pony Nation as a sign of goodwill (and to encourage dye production). The tailors and artisans tended these fields thrice a year to ensure the flowers flourished. Rainfall was guaranteed twice a month under the Wingtip Treaty. “He might as well be afraid of air or birdsongs. Magic doesn’t just live in the grooves and spirals of alicorns, after all.”

Heartstrings looked down the path to the spot where the human would meet them. There was a dark shape in the sky too big for a pegasus and with too many limbs to be a bird. Instinctively she moved closer to the other pony. “It’s not like we can pick and choose what frightens us, Star Swirl.”

“I wish he’d mentioned something earlier. Mayhap we could do something to ease him. A lesson on the common functions of sorcery or the elemental structure of—”

“If he wanted you t’know his plights, he’d have said something,” Heartstrings said. “Actually, I’m not even sure if I should have told you. Let him deal with it as he pleases.” Changing the subject, she patted the package at her side. “I’m glad we got him this. He gets so cold these days.”

Star Swirl hummed, a little perturbed that his idea was cut off before it went anywhere. He wasn’t sure when it became “we” either. He had nothing at all to do with the gift outside color suggestions. “Well, if he’s still wandering about in the dead of night, there’ll be plenty of use in it.”

The dark shape came closer. Heartstrings shrank into the grass and pressed herself against Star Swirl’s cloak so suddenly he nearly tripped over her.

The red and black griffon passed over their heads and circled once, long and low. Low enough for Star Swirl to see the griffon’s feathers were white and not red. A great hunk of entrails shimmered in its claws. Its movements were strong, deliberate, and almost lazy. It wanted to be seen. A fiery, glittering eye blinked at them and Star Swirl felt Heartstrings’ breath stop.

The stargazer set his hooves in the dirt and stared back at it. The only part of him that moved was his dark cape and bright beard waving in the breeze. Something wet dripped from the griffon’s talons and into the stallion’s mane. He felt it sink into his scalp. Star Swirl did not blink.

The griffon circled again, growling like an empty stomach before it lifted out of sight in the cloud-bitten sky.

Star Swirl snorted, slashing the empty air with his horn. “Caitiff.”

“It came from the east,” Heartstrings said. In the distance, not far from their camp, buzzards drifted like ash in the sky. The east was where they’d left him. “Star Swirl, ye don’t think... the griffons don’t eat humans, do they?”

“They might. But that fellow was unmarked with nary a feather out of place. Against our human, a griffon would be lucky to escape with a limp.”

Heartstrings stood, brushing the dust from her saddlebags. “I suppose that’s true.” The two of them went on a little way before she said, “I’m sorry, by the way. For calling you hollow. I know that you’re not.”

“That’s alright.”

 

The human met the unicorns as he was coming back from the pond. He shivered from the chill in the air and his own dripping hair, but his step was light and he was already smiling before he saw them. A fox trailed behind him in cautious little steps. The human didn’t seem to notice.

“Hello. How was town?”

“It was very nice,” Heartstrings chirped. She balanced on three legs as she pulled the parcel out of her saddlebag and offered it to him. “How was your boring empty field?”

“Not boring at all.” The human jostled his pack against his shoulder. “I enjoyed myself.”

Star Swirl inclined a hoof towards the fox. “Have you made another friend?”

“Hardly. The little menace stole from me and now it won’t leave me alone.” He shook his fist at the scavenger, who only sat and yawned. “I ought to make it into a pillow.”

Star Swirl stretched his neck. In the distance he could just barely make out the blanket of vultures swamping the bones of some unlucky creature. “Ah, I see.”

The human squished the side of the bag experimentally. The softness of it surprised him; the way Heartstrings went on about music he’d half expected her to give him a violin. As the unicorns watched, he pulled out a cloak long and green as the Knave’s wildwood, eggshell white along the edge. The outer fabric was sturdy and its slick softness reminded him of duck feathers. The lining was thick but soft as rabbit ears. The pockets sewn into the sides were perfect for keeping combs, lockpicks, and knives.    

Immediately he tried it on. It clung and warmed him like a sweet memory. Neither the bewildered tailor nor Heartstrings knew exactly how long it ought to be and had overestimated the length. It fluttered at his ankles and dragged along the ground when the human didn’t stand at full height. The hood draped over his eyes and when he bent his head nothing of his face could be seen at all. If he wished, the whole of him could hide in these mossy folds, nothing could see him if he did not wish it.

The unicorns peered at him, twitching their ears curiously.

“Well? D’you like it?” asked Heartstrings.

A breeze picked up, the cloak flared and snapped against the human but he felt none of it. He felt more woodwraith than man. The lower half of his face split into a grin. “I do.” The human scratched Heartstrings behind the ears. “Indeed, I do. This is a very good present.”

Star Swirl nosed the human’s other hand. “I helped,” he pointed out.

Heartstrings smirked. “Funny, I remember you sitting in the corner for two hours in a sulk.”  

“I picked out the color. It counts as helping.”

The human chuckled and rubbed Star Swirl’s ear. “Well, I do like the color.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When Star Swirl mentions "alicorn" he refers to the horn of a unicorn, not a winged unicorn (or horned pegasus).
> 
> Pretty sure this boar hunt with -10 preparation is the dumbest thing the human does in this whole story, but dammit, it's his birthday and he's just gonna do what he wants, I guess.


	11. Where the Rust Met the Vine

The disc was round, rough, and crumbling with the redness of old bloodstains. It was shaped like a bowl and had long holes scored into it. Indentions sank along the sides, as if someone had pressed a thumb in the iron.

Star Swirl poked it with his hoof. “What do you suppose it is? It couldn’t be a vessel, the water would leak and the holes are too big for straining… mayhap it tops a bowl instead and the holes let out steam?”

“I don’t think so, lad.” Heartstrings sniffed the metal, wrinkling her nose at its harsh scent. “It’s got the smell of toughness about it. Under all the dirt there’s something my nose doesn’t know.. harsh and ashy, the way smoke is. It might be a weapon.”

“How? There are no sharp edges and it isn’t heavy at all. I still think it’s for ventilation.”

“Don’t be daft, those holes obviously meant for fingers and look, the shape is perfect for throwing. I can see it sailing o’er the air now.” Heartstrings brushed the disc with her tail. “Hmm. It could be a toy, perhaps? An iron toy for human foals to chase an’ toss?”

Star Swirl rolled his eyes. “Please. As if they would fritter their idle hours away when they could be learning how to light their towers or learning how to fly. They are humans, not puppies.”

“…I don’t think humans can fly, lad.”

“No, but they could learn how if they wanted. They make water come from walls and make their own hooves; you don’t think they could figure out how to fly if they felt like flying?”

The human leaned over both ponies and took the metal disc, rust falling off it like dandruff. “It’s a hubcap. It goes on the wheels of a car.”

“Why?” Star Swirl asked.

“Don’t know. It just does.” The human flipped and tossed the hubcap from hand to hand, studying the little bumps and grooves. There was rust but it had not eaten though the metal. It was still silver in several places; the hubcap hadn’t been here very long. “Is it common for these sorts of things to pop up in pony territories?”

Heartstrings tilted her head, a little distracted by the dexterity of fingers. “Hubcaps?”

“Human objects.”

“I don’t think so. There are things we find but can’t identify, but those aren’t found where anypony lives.”

“We usually find them in human buildings,” Star Swirl put in. “My tutor once found a box of glass spheres capped with metal on the bottom and little brass curls in the center. He hung them from his door as wind chimes.” He offered a smug grin. “Everyone told me diamond dogs made them, but I knew better.”

The human glanced around the little bower of saplings they stood in, as if he expected to discover more hubcaps in the frail branches. In the distance he could make out tall shapes that didn’t match the world around them. They were stiff and geometric. Boxy. Human.

His stance reminded Heartstrings of a bony fox on the scent of prey. She could practically see the itch in the human’s feet. “What do ye see?”

The human set the hubcap down and walked on in heavy, sharp footsteps. “I’m not sure, but I’m going to find out.” He went into a jog, and then a light run, his staff pushing him along like a third leg. The unicorns cantered beside him, the human’s green cloak brushing at their withers.

In the two hours they traveled, the human kept silent, and only slowed his pace to let the unicorns catch their breath. How he managed to constantly keep this pace was a marvel. Star Swirl suspected that even at a full sprint the human would not tire, that he would still be on his feet where a pony or stag would have collapsed from exhaustion. What would it be like to be on the wrong side of such a creature? Star Swirl found himself glad that he was an ally and not an enemy.

Heartstrings dashed ahead of him, waiting on antsy hooves for the stallion to catch up before she sprang like a lamb and pronked away.

“That’s a good way to use up energy, you know.” Star Swirl rumpled his face. “Act your age, for stars’ sake.”

The mare giggled at the wrinkles lining his face in a grumpy cob’s frown and flicked her snowy tail. “You first.”

The three of them soon left the saplings for older woodlands where cottonwoods stood aloof of each other, as if in a quarrel. It was here the human finally stopped. There was no doubt of it now; those were the hard-lines of human towers and that was a human city. Or what was left of it.

Heartstrings sniffed the air. It was tinged with the hubcap’s scent: old, rusted and acrid. But that smell couldn’t be the city; it was still at least a mile away.

Star Swirl bumped her haunch. “Watch your hooves.”

She glanced at the rocks littering the grass, all different sizes and oddly shaped with sharp, bright edges. They weren’t rocks at all, but shards of glass. Heartstrings lifted one of the larger pieces with her magic, turning it from side to side. It was etched with little letters. “Here, Star Swirl. Make use of your education and tell me what this says. I don’t think it’s Equine.

A spark of recognition lit Star Swirl’s eyes. “It’s not. It isn’t any of our languages.” He pointed a hoof toward the cloaked figure stooped  in the distance. “It’s his. Human! We’ve found a—”

“I know. There’s more over here.” The human stalked over a carpet of glass jars in thirds and halves and wholes. Crinkled bits of bleached plastic rocked in the breeze. The man held a tin case marked with a red symbol, staring at it as if the contents might magically appear if he looked long enough. He set it down and began rooting through the other scattered objects for something useful when Star Swirl cried out again.

“Is something the matter?”

“No, but…” The words jumbled in Star Swirl’s mouth. “I found… it’s… well. Um. You’ll want to see this.”

 The unicorns stood on a little ridge where the land dipped and leaned low. It might have been a pond or a quarry once upon a time. Misplaced bricks and pipes leading nowhere sprouted from the bottom, but that was not what held the ponies’ attention.

The human peered into the pit and pulled his cloak in on himself. “Oh.”  

Two rust-spotted vehicles lay at the bottom of the ridge. The pickup truck was nearly in two pieces, wheels stuck in the air like a dead cockroach and bent over the rocks as if it had been cracked like an egg. All that held it together were thin strips of yellow metal and a young spruce tree growing through the windows and windshield, propping up the vehicle like an easel. Yellow leaves floated in the murky pools of water in the truck bed.  

 The human didn’t know the proper name for the second massive vehicle lying on its side as if napping. It was too big for a car and unlike other supply trucks it wasn’t meant to tow trailers. It was all one solid block, a box on wheels. The frame was heavy, rounded, and at least three feet taller than the pickup truck. It was made of sterner stuff than a humble steel cage. The headlights were unbroken, as were all seven of the dark windows. The titanic bumpers were unrusted and while the white paint had greyed with filth and time, it was still visible. The tires looked almost good enough to drive on and the engine was intact.

The old machine was in fantastic condition if not for one detail: three jagged slashes in the metal walls than ran from roof to undercarriage. It was as if it had been torn open the same way the boar had under griffon talons. The corners of the roof pinched and bunched like a clutched handkerchief. Open supply canisters and tins and little glass jars bled into the grass around it, no different than the broken piles of debris they found earlier.  

Heartstrings busied herself investigating the tough scales of the tires and the strange glass—  black mirrors on one side but clear on the other. Regular mirrors stuck out from the sides and hanging inside the iron carriage as well. The driver must have been very vain.

The human approached carefully, peeking around the great bumper before he climbed atop the vehicle. The metal didn’t give under his weight and the sound of boots didn’t reverberate, more like iron walls of a ship than the thin aluminum coat of cars.

Inside was a sparse world of dust, leather, and glass. A family of terrified raccoons stared at him from the backseat where clouds of yellow stuffing burst from the seams. Something gleamed next to them. The human shooed the little animals away with his staff and slipped through the lacerated metal for a closer look.

Star Swirl watched him from the ground, gingerly touching the ugly metal wounds with his hoof. “What can kill something made of armor?” he wondered. “I don’t think even dragons can make tears like these…not with their claws. Teeth, perhaps, but these aren’t toothmarks.” He stomped upon the windshield, but it didn’t even crack. “Do you suppose it simply died and fell into the ravine and the humans had to cut themselves out?”

“It’s possible.” The man poked the raccoons away from him with the staff as his free hand tossed out the thing he found. It was long, black, and shiny, blunt on one end with a smooth tube at the other. It was entirely inelegant and made an awkward club.

Star Swirl sniffed at the round opening, “What have you found?”

The human frowned and lifted it out of his reach. “You shouldn’t put your face there.”

 “Why? ‘Tis but a chunk of metal. Not even sharp.”

“You don’t strike with it.” He popped the thing open like a walnut and eyed the insides. “It’s some sort of rifle. You shoot with it.” It seemed a fine rifle, too. Even the human with his small frame of reference knew that.

“What does it shoot?” Heartstrings asked. “Arrows?”

“Little bits of metal. Ones like this can hit a bear from miles away before the old thing even knows what hit it.”

Star Swirl balanced on his back legs to get a better look. “Might we see you use it?”

The human laughed. “Of course not. First of all, it’s not loaded. Second of all, guns are for girls. How ridiculous would it look, a man my age walking around with a weapon meant for mothers and brides strapped to his back?” He looked at the brassy shells littering the wounded vehicle. “Rifles are also useful for air attacks. I wonder what happened to these ladies.”

There was nothing else to salvage from the vehicles but broken glass and coonskins. The human and his companions moved on and into the city.

 

Slowly but surely, the land under their boots and horseshoes changed. Grass thinned, loamy soil morphed into asphalt, and skeletal skyscrapers draped shadows over them like refugee blankets.

Star Swirl tripped over his own legs trying to look at everything at once. The full scope of iron towers humbled him and the glint of unpolished metal set him wandering off, only to have his cape caught and led back by the human’s hand. The unicorn couldn’t help himself. There was so much to see here. So much to know. Why were these signs yellow? Why was this part of the street colored red? What was that wire for? Where did that pipe lead? How tall was that bridge? Why was a ladder crawling up that building? Star Swirl longed to voice all of these questions, but something in the human’s stance stopped him.

The man moved in slow, respectful steps and kept his companions close. To go among brick and steel lifted his spirits and made his heart thick with homesick wonder, but he wrangled the urge to run and explore. These bricks were not his and there was always danger in a city that did not belong to you.

This city was greener than it was grey. Saplings shot from the concrete in little shocks of gold and red, trembling like skinny flags. Hawks nested in crumbling conference rooms and executive suites. Bats and naked tailed possums slept in the shade of parking garages. Long legged tabbies stalked rats in the guts of restaurants. Foxed played in hollow pantries. Kudzu curled over the bulbs of streetlamps. Wings rustled the dust and paws scurried in dirt.

Life flourished in every crevice. Truly, this was a dead city.

In a plaza crawling with moss stood a tower unlike the others. It was thin and even taller than its neighbors and the shining sides were made of mirrors. It blazed in the autumn sunshine, not one of the gleaming tiles broken. Scuffed, faded, scratched, bent, and dull, but otherwise standing proud and ignorant of the decay around it.

The man paused and watched his reflection for a while, eyeing the pale scars on his limbs, the artery lines in his neck, the fall of soft, dark curls around his ears, the rings under his eyes, and the green hood pooling at his shoulders. He watched as if he might forget what he looked like. And then he moved his eye and watched the reflected still, empty city sprawling above, around, and behind him.

The human found himself missing people he had never known, seeking hidden histories in the brick, longing for light filling tiny windows. He had known it would be like this. He had. The griffon had warned him. He knew.

But something in this ugly, beautiful place where the rust met the vine hurt him in ways he didn't expect. It called up something the human never knew he had: the quiet, stupid hope that he would be wrong.

The human stared at the tower like a child who'd never seen death before, waiting for a flattened cat to open its eyes. Though he knew better, he made a sign for silence and put his fingers to his mouth. He whistled one long note, two short ones, and then one long note again. It was so sharp Heartstrings and Star Swirl flattened their ears against it. The man waited a few silent seconds, frowned and then whistled again. He whistled until he ran out of breath to whistle with

Heartstrings nosed the human’s clenched fist. He twisted his fingers in her mane so tightly it hurt, but the mare just gritted her teeth and let him. They listened together as the whistle’s echo faded into the street.

In the tower’s reflection the sky shrank under white clouds. Heartstrings felt the back of her neck prickle, as if a storm was brewing. She twitched her ears and looked over her shoulder into the distance. Something seemed different all of a sudden.

Star Swirl tapped her shoulder. “Hey, we’re moving again.” Indeed, the human was already almost a block away and somehow Heartstrings hadn’t even noticed. “What are you looking at?”

 The mare followed him slowly, with her eyes still on the sky behind her. Wasn’t the sky clear a moment ago? "I can't see the mountains," she whispered. "Not even a little. Makes me nervous." The clouds piled upon each other, lumpy and solid as a pile of stones.

“They’re probably behind the buildings,” Star Swirl said. “Places that belong to humans don’t fit in with the world around it and magic doesn’t behave, if it stirs at all. ‘Tis only the way of the land. Come along before we lose sight of the human. I don’t fancy hunting for him in this labyrinth.”

“Hm. I suppose.”

Behind her, the cloud shifted. Heartstrings thought she saw something appear and disappear in the reflection of the sky: round, glossy and dark. As if the cloud had blinked.

“Star Swirl…”

“Yes?”

Heartstrings looked again. There was only a long train of cumulous lazing over the mountaintops.

“Nothing.”

They found the human scaling a wire fence, slipping over the top easy as a lizard. He had some trouble when the end of his cloak caught on the barbs, but soon the human clung to the opposite side of the fence, landing on all fours in a haze of dust. He waved at the little ponies on the other side.

The human poked at the gate with a lockpick. “It’s about time you caught up.” The gate let in the unicorns with a creaky yawn. The man jabbed a thumb at the squat building behind him, pale bricked with crosshatch bars guarding the windows. “I found this thing.”

Heartstrings hummed at the razor wire topping the gate. “What sort of place is it? I don’t think it’s keen on unwelcome comp’ny.”

A grin curled the human’s mouth. “That’s why I’m here. Anything guarded has something worth guarding. The locks and windows are unbroken, I don’t think anyone’s rooted through it yet.” He ran one hand over the series of locks upon the front door while fishing for a proper pick with the other. “I think it’s either a prison for criminals or a schoolhouse for children. Or a prison for children. I can never tell the difference, they both look so similar.”

Star Swirl investigated colorful scrawls upon the brick, bright letters twisted to the point of no longer being letters. He couldn't tell if it was the work of vandals or artists. "I've been meaning to ask, why are there no cars in this city? There were so many in the pictures."

"Probably went with everybody else. It's how they— _we_ —traveled in the Old World. You know that, Star Swirl." The man glanced from his lockpick at the street full of weeds and wildflowers. He remembered the rusted station wagon by the mall and the little convertible resting outside his library at home. To see none at all _was_  a bit odd. A city without cars was like a city without rats.

One by one the locks clicked open and the door swung inward to reveal a wide room filled with twelve large circular tables. A thick partition of glass-topped metal sectioned off the back quarter of the room. A pile of warped plastic trays and rusty forks scattered behind it. The roof dipped in to meet them, the center blown inside out to let in the breeze. Towards the back, pots and pans and sinks overflowed with rainwater.

Heartstrings stared at a tattered red and gray banner dangling lopsided from the wall. A crude picture of a tiger snarled at her. “So which is it?”

The human moved a little red chair out of the way and made a beeline for the glass structure. “School.” His eyes skimmed over the rusty utensils and rotten cardboard a moment before diving into the cabinets lined up along the wall. The little doors were rotted to the point where locks were useless and they fell away with a few tugs. The man wasted no time in diving in for a thorough supply search. Expired cans rolled away in droves.

Star Swirl aimlessly circled the room, squishing on a carpet of wet yellow leaves and warped linoleum. He paused to squint at words in a language he didn’t know before circling again. It would just be his luck to find a dining hall, the least interesting part of an academy. The chairs modeled for a little human’s long back and short legs were vaguely interesting, but that was it.

Heartstrings perched on one of the tables and quietly watched. Up here she had a clear view of the human’s search and did not have to look at the chairs too small for adults. She wished they had discovered a prison instead.

Midway through the search, the human began to sing to himself in that raw, unkempt voice of his that kept wandering off key. He often sang these days. This time it was the ballad of someone named Frankie and her sweetheart, Albert, and how their love died in bloodshed and infidelity.

“Does anyone in human ballads get happy endings?”

“Sometimes,” the human said. “Sometimes not. That’s just the way stories are sometimes. Tam Lin and Janet come out alright, but William and Margaret don’t. Stagger Lee won, too.”

Heartstrings frowned. “Stagger Lee was the one that went about unfairly killin’ people because he’d lost a gamble, wasn’t he?”

“You asked who got happy endings, not who deserved them.” The human crowed in triumph and held out a jar of salt, still perfectly sealed.

Heartstrings twitched her ears. “Salt’s a hard habit to break. Are ye sure—”

Powdery rubble dribbled from the ceiling and the rafters creaked. Something unseen quietly growled. Star Swirl looked up from the other side of the room, trading a worried glance with Heartstrings.

“You can do more with salt than just eat it.” The human stored the jar in his pack, careful to keep it cushioned. Then, in a voice calm and quiet as empty sky he said, “We are being followed.”

He fetched his staff and motioned the ponies over to him. “I’d rather not leave the way we came. Keep your ears up.”

The three of them left the room for a fat hallway shedding painted skin. Posters peeling from the walls advised them to read and not pollute. Many rooms passed by, housing clutches of square desks. In some rooms they huddled in groups, in others they stood in orderly rows, and dozens of small dusty chairs stood with all of them.

The human kept his eyes on the ceiling. It was composed of a series of pale moldy tiles, square caverns dotting where they fell through. As they went on the tiles faded to rafters, vents, and broken lights. The roof groaned and little feet scampered in the walls. The human’s hand drifted lazily at his sides and came away holding a knife.

Just ahead the hallway stretched into a maw of daylight. As the roof and walls deteriorated around them, Heartstrings could no longer tell if they were outside or inside.

The ghost of white stripes ran circled patterns over rotten floorboards that keened with every step. All four sides guarded by tall poles, each one topped by a wooden boards that dangled nets of steel mesh. Iron rafters arced and spread like a ribcage, delicately bracing what was left of a roof between them.

The steel mesh jingled, though there was no breeze. A shadow darted in the corner. A sprinkle of plaster and splinters fell.

Heartstrings heard someone yell as she fell under the weight of something small and heavy. Needles dug into her shoulders, something hard and rough and scaly roped around her barrel, lashing at her neck. A snapping jaw just missed her ear. She bucked and rolled, but the hold wouldn’t give. Heartstrings barely saw the flash of metal before a sheet of green flapped across her eyes. The dead building echoed with a gargling shriek and the weight dropped from her back.

Breathing hard, Heartstrings looked up to see a wiry yellow dragon no bigger than a housecat twisting in the human’s tangled cloak. Its two legs kicked as it bit the human’s knife with two rows of serrated teeth. With a gargled hiss, it scrambled free and lifted into the air on leathery wings, lashing a tail twice the length of its body. Blood trickled from its haunch.

Another one, red scaled under purple bruises, dove from Star Swirl’s kicking hooves. A third, olive green and stub-nosed, bit at the unicorn’s pink tail before the human swung at it with his staff. It wheeled to bite the man’s arm before Heartstrings caught the lashing tail in her teeth long enough for Star Swirl to kick the beast’s head in. The red wyvern swooped into the rafters and crawled along like a bat, gripping with claws on the tips of its wings.

Heartstrings pricked her ears at air snapping under wings and lit her horn. A bone-white wyvern hovered in a gold halo of magic, jaws inches away from her head. The aura dropped as the human’s staff cracked against its skull and it went flying across the room. It hit a wall with a wet thud and did not rise again.

The man ducked as the yellow one swooped down and away at his head. “Aren’t dragons supposed to be bigger?”

“They’re still young yet— _away_ , you wretch!” The red wyvern hadn’t given up on Star Swirl, circling just out of reach of sharp horn and hard hooves. “But if these aren’t enough of a challenge you’re welcome to wait a couple decades.”

The human swatted at the yellow tail lashing his face. “I’m fine with this size, thanks.” He struck the beast’s jaw, knocking it from the air. It stumbled only a moment before righting itself and wheeling out of reach.

The yellow wyvern clicked its jaw twice. Its red and green kin escaped their attackers and rose to meet their brother in the air. The three of them swooped and wheeled, clicking and burbling and hissing at each other. Their round eyes never left the troublesome creatures scowling below them. The olive one stuck out its split tongue.

“Nasty ankle biters. Did their ma teach ‘em no manners?” Heartstrings snorted and tossed her disheveled mane. “Rude.”

“Be grateful the babes of dragonfolk raise themselves, Heartstrings. I’d bet my bells they’re the brood of the wyvern besieging North Hill.” Star Swirl moved in the join his companions so that eyes guarded all sides. “At least they aren’t fire breathers yet.”

The wyvern triplets swooped as one in a whirlwind of scales and teeth, wing beats in perfect sync as they fell upon their targets. The human caught the red one with his knife before he felt teeth sink in base of his neck, digging deep and deeper into muscle. The collar of his shirt grew damp. The little dragon weighed like a sack of wet cement and the human bent low under it. His arm struggled against the tail wrapped around it. His ears filled with burbling and hissing. He could hardly breathe against the smell of ash and lye.

Heartstrings’ magic flashed and died, too close to the human to be any use. Star Swirl’s cape tangled with wings. Someone screamed, though it was impossible to tell who. The human felt claws dig into his side, ripping past the cloak and tunic and into skin, and deeper still and—and then gone.

The wyverns stopped.

It was neither a trickling halt nor a pensive, reluctant hover. They did not reconsider and they did not double back. The three little wyverns simply froze upon the ground as if statues. Their jaws still bore bloody teeth in mid-snarl.

Tired and bleeding, the human and the unicorns stood. One by one, the wyverns fluttered to the ground, gentle as plastic bags in the wind.

The scrawny leader blinked its swollen eye and warbled in the back of its throat, its thin yellow tail clutching at itself. Behind it, the other wyverns rolled their bulbous orange eyes up and up and up, staring at nothing. A reedy whimper squeezed from one dragon to the other.

The human leaned against his staff, pressed a hand on his bloody neck, and glowered. Heartstrings tilted her head and sniffed at the air. Star Swirl nickered and fidgeted under his cape.

The wyverns took a collective step back. Then another.

Bits of plaster crumbled from what was left of the ceiling. The wyverns snapped from their trance and fled. Tumbling over each other, they scrambled into a gap in the wall

Star Swirl swiveled his ears at their little claws clicking on pipes and fading into the distance.

Heartstrings smelled rain, though the ache in her bones that foretold a storm was mysteriously absent. The sky held nothing but white clouds.

The human frowned. It would be safer to crawl up to the rafters or fly away. Why duck into the walls? He dug his nails into the wood of his staff.

It was then they realized: the city was still. No bird sang. No rat scampered. The breeze dared not move. Under his cloak the human grew cold. 

The sun dimmed. The clouds pulled together in the sky until it was all one white rolling stratus, perfectly smooth. The air grew wet and thick. A pallid pall settled on the skyscrapers.

The cloud blinked.

And the White Roc came down.


	12. The Iron Bell Where the Iron Fell

He was not the gentle white of snowfall or new moonlight. He was not the full, dirty white of ocean froth or eggshells or old hospital walls. The Roc was simply the absence of color, the nothing after death. The blues and greys and golds of the sky melted when he touched them. The sun bleached and ran. Light wafted from his feathers like steam. Wingtip to wingtip, it was impossible to tell where the clouds ended and the White Roc began.

The human clutched his staff and stumbled back against a peeling, crumbling wall. His chest heaved as blood and sweat dripped down his neck, soaking the collar of his shirt. He felt clouds brushing at his ankles, smothering and thick. He felt frail, wispy clouds settle over his shoulders, dragging him down. The human could not move, transfixed by smooth feathers and the desperate need to find some unconquered section of the sky, some way to understand the scope and scale of the Roc. If he found it, perhaps he could understand it. Perhaps he could do… something. Anything. The Roc was enormous, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t—

Then the White Roc looked at him.

His eyes were backwards: sclera inky black with white pupils, like an egg floating in oil. The Roc tilted his head. The pupil flashed like a fire flower before it blossoms.

The man’s knees wobbled. _He knows._

The Roc’s eyes tore ribs and skin from the human’s chest and idly blinked at the naked trembling heart beneath. He knew what the human wanted, who he’d loved or hated, the dark things that wormed in his head and kept him up at night. He knew where the human would run, whether he favored high or low hiding places, what would make him cower under his own cape and what would draw out his knives. The White Roc knew the human as the human knew rabbits, as the rabbits knew grass. There was not a move the human could make that the Roc could not see.

_I am going to die._

The clouds leaned in low. Somewhere, Star Swirl said something but the human didn’t know what. The human stared as the White Roc reached out talons the color of old dishwater. The metal rafters wheezed and snapped like splinters, what was left of the roof fell in, crashing down in blasts of filthy glass and rotten wood.

A pane of glass nicked his ear. The pain snapped the human from his static terror. He turned and fled.

Heartstrings skittered and dashed away from falling debris, rearing as a groaning metal pole nearly crushed her back. She coughed in the dust, squinting at the flare of green fluttering down the hallway. The mare shook chunks of plaster from her coat, tested her limbs, swiveled her ears. The heavy, frantic slap of boot on tile was fading fast and the clouds were on the move. Her breath was still labored and her bones ached from the weight of wyverns. Heartstrings took a fresh gulp of air, blew her white mane out of her face, and narrowed her eyes. Her legs burst into a gallop, only to be stopped by a painful tug.

Star Swirl’s eyes kept to the sky, his teeth clamped on Heartstrings’ tail. “Hold a moment.”

“We don’t have a moment! Did ye _see_  that that thing?”

“Two little unicorns could hardly keep up with him running across that open field for the fun of it. You really think we can catch him running to save his own skin?” Heartstrings stopped yanking her tail, but Star Swirl kept his grip. “Even if we could catch up, we’d no doubt lose him in this iron maze.”

Heartstrings groaned and stared after the place where the human had stood. One of his knives lay on the ground, the slim one that sliced at wyvern scales not five minutes before. It must have fallen from his hand when the Roc came down. The red blade dully shone in the dust. The human never left his knives behind. Never. “If we can’t catch him, what are we t’do? We canna leave him here.”

The stallion let her tail go and ran his tongue along the edge of his teeth in thought. “Hm. I’ve an idea. Come with me.”

Heartstrings blew the dust from the blade and took the human’s knife in her teeth. She wrapped it in a handkerchief and slid it into her bag, safe besides her lyre and sugar cubes. With one last look over her shoulder, she followed Star Swirl into the city.

A crumbling schoolhouse was an ill shelter; the human knew that before he ran in. The thin, peeling walls would fare no better than the thin, crumbling roof. He may as well be hiding under wet newspaper. But the only other option was to run in the other direction. Outside. Under those clouds. No. No, he would run here. He welcomed risk of being crushed under rafters and brick with open arms.

Exhaustion and pain from sharp little dragon teeth evaporated from his shoulders. Fear steeled his knotted stomach and made his tired legs strong and nimble. The human bolted over stairs, taking three at a time, weaving in and out of bolt holes and down the stairs again. He scrambled through the cobwebbed boiler room and weaved through bookshelves in search of a place to hide himself.

The Roc’s eye burned through the boilers. It tore away the bookshelves. It hovered above the hallways. The human heard nothing but his own footfalls, he saw nothing but the dilapidated walls, smelled nothing but dirt and mold. But the white pupil burned through his cloak and into his chest. The human didn’t dare look up.

_I’m such an idiot._

Why hadn’t he seen it before? The scattered bullet shells. The ugly clawmarks through the armored vehicle. The lack of cars in the city. All well in sight of the Caulkins. And he’d moved _toward_  it. This whole time he was moving toward it. And he’d known it. Everything on every step of this journey warned what was waiting for him. He went on anyway. Why? What on earth was the matter with him? When did he become so stupid? His mother didn’t raise him to be this stupid. She told him to live and he went out on the road hunting for his own death. She would be so disappointed in him.

The human stopped in his tracks. The walls shook. All around him little chairs and little desks in their little rooms fell with a clatter. Fractures spider webbed across window panes. Pipes snapped in half. He wouldn’t reach the doors in time. Even if he could, where would he go?

_For a lord of the world, you’re not very smart. What could you possibly have been thinking?_  Old Pyrite’s bitter voice echoed in the dust: _A rare, breakable thing like yourself should have stayed cloistered up where you were and you know it._

Lightbulbs smashed. The roof dipped in. He ran one way, and then stopped. He ran in the opposite direction and paused again. The schoolhouse groaned and something fell.

On instinct the man ducked down and pulled into his hood, as if the oilskin could protect him. His best knife, half the length of his arm and three generations older than he, pressed against his palm. The human didn’t remember drawing it out and it would do him little good, but he was glad it was with him. The schoolhouse bent and groaned on the other side of his hood. For a terrible minute the world was all dust and noise.

It grew quiet. The green cloak floated in the open air. The man peeked out from his dusty hood. The chain-link fence curled in on itself a few feet away, the gate still hanging open though there was no longer a building to protect. Jagged chunks of drywall and brick and metal splayed around him like flower petals. The outer walls were tall mounds of grey and red rubble. Yet, the tiles around the human’s feet were untouched. No snapped pipes, no broken glass, not one chunk of plaster fell upon him. The schoolhouse had withered into crumbs.

The human stared wide-eyed as clouds rolled out over his head and the world spread itself distressingly wide. Walls. He needed walls. He ran due north, deftly skirting mounds of debris, jumping and scrambling over what he couldn’t weave around. He kept low and in the shadows. A slim alleyway choked with dumpsters waited in the distance.

In the corner of his eye, a wall of white feathers heaved in the dust and lifted away. Just above the human’s head floated a great mass of brick and stone, squeezed by dishwater grey talons. Only the chunks of debris made a shadow. The White Roc lifted higher and let a sliver of blue came back.

The human pressed himself against a dumpster tripped on its side. He didn’t feel the burning eyes on him anymore, but that wouldn’t last. He was sure of it. If a building couldn’t protect him, neither could an alley or a feeble old dumpster. A terrible scream of twisting, wrenching metal rang out a few blocks away. The needle of a skyscraper vanished into the clouds. The man’s mouth went dry as he crawled into the dumpster. Just to catch his breath. Just to get his bearings.

He wouldn’t need to get his bearings in his own city. In his own city he could tuck into the old train tunnels or the old bunkers or the musty sewers underground. And those were only the places he knew off the top of his head. Threats from the air were never a priority, but there was still protocol for them, just in case some barbarous human somewhere knew how to work airplanes or a dragon decided to make trouble.

Glass shattered. The asphalt rumbled. Steel screeched. A thin mist (or was it only dust?) seeped into the alley.  

In this filthy dumpster, damp with the stink of his own sweat all he could remember was the musty basement under his library. The cellars near the woods. The storm drains. In the river under a sturdy bridge. Dozens of carefully woven escape routes, besides that. The human curled in the rusted, filthy corner of the dumpster, bent his head and moaned.

The shadows around the dumpster went away. The human bent his head to see the walls of the alley were gone. A syrupy mist rolled across the asphalt and through it he could barely see a shallow collection of bricks and a doorframe. Then the sides of the dumpster pinched in on themselves and the human felt himself lift into the air. He scrambled and clawed his way out, landing on the asphalt.

He heard the clang of metal on metal behind him—one of his knives had fell from his cloak, the reliable toothy one. The human looked back a moment before sense came back to him and he ran. Survival was important. Knives were not.

Dirt splattered into the air as the dumpster crashed to the earth, crumpled into a little ball, as if made of newspaper. Bright unseen eyes sparked the human’s boots and burned into his back.

He only went where the Roc was not. Away.

Away from the talons. Away from the fire flower eyes.

His feet slapped clumsily beneath him, though he could not feel them anymore. The human couldn’t see them either. The mist hardened into sheets of swampy, swollen fog curling at his fingertips. The city was a line of hazy silhouettes fading in and out like old memories. Sometimes he saw kudzu leaves or a yellow splash of street sign or bent lamppost rush by him. More often he didn’t.

The ground trembled. A tower screamed and fell somewhere far away. Then another. And another. Good. The human couldn’t see the Roc, or much of anything else, but he could hear it ruining someplace that wasn’t here.

His boot caught and twisted in some unseen crack in the concrete. Pain shot into human’s buckling legs. He barely caught himself with his hands, burning his palms on the slick surface. The man frowned. Why was the ground slick and smooth? A patch of mist swept away with a wave of his hands. Tiles. Yellow, moldy tiles. Not far away, a little red chair. He’d gone in a circle.  

The human stood, wincing at the dull, but manageable pain scraping his tendon. Another building collapsed in the distance, so far off he didn’t even feel the reverberations. It fell way on the other side of the city, perhaps. A smile wobbled across the human’s face. He rubbed his leg and turned away.

The human’s reflection bent and warped in the black of the Roc’s eye. A white pupil bigger than the man’s head blazed inches from his nose. It distantly smelled of rain. The fog exhaled and a roof of colorless feathers fanned over his head, around his shoulders. Wisps of mist or feathers sighed against the back of his knees. 

All the muscle in his arms bunched as the maple staff rammed into great eye. It blinked or moved or evaporated and the human hit nothing but air. There was only fog. The human did not feel the White Roc’s eye upon him.

The world grew brighter as another wall crumbled to dust. An iron skeleton creaked, bent, and faded into the clouds. Or it fell. Was there really a difference? The human’s breath came short. His back fell against something scaled, glassy, and hard… and dishwater grey. Feathers brushed against his skin.

Before the man had time to jump, the Roc’s foot was gone again. The maple staff dropped from his hands. He hardly noticed. The knot in his stomach tightened. His ankle throbbed.

 And the city. The poor unloved unnamed city wouldn’t stop falling. It moaned and screamed and wailed for someone to help it. Landslides of rubble fell into each other in rumbling death rattles. The human’s ears hurt and his legs hurt and his back hurt and he couldn’t see any silhouettes through the fog. He couldn’t see anything at all. Nothing but whiteness and his own two hands desperately clutching at themselves.

A strangled murmur rose in the back of his throat like bile. The city was gone. Vanished. Only ghosts vanished like that… had there ever been a city here at all? Maybe once, a long time ago. Not now. There was only one city in the world, and the human in his eternal foolishness abandoned it. His library and pigeons and river and gardens and the open lot where he buried his mother was lost to the fog now. A ghost town.

The White Roc banked low, dusty billows swirled around his feet. The earth sank under his weight. His curved pearly beak opened and he made a sound like sand falling in an hourglass. The tongue was the color of dust.

The human pulled his cloak tight and took three steps back, staring at his fingernails. In that moment he knew he would never see his home again. A clang of metal rang at his feet. The knife of the human’s father’s father, the one that kept him alive in the winter and killed a great boar just last week, fell into the fog. The human closed his eyes. Just as well.  

A stiff wind knocked the human’s feet from under him and he fell hard. His hands did not catch him. The Roc’s talons fidgeted beside his arm. The human thought he saw a flash of golden light above him, but surely he imagined it. Whatever became of the little ponies following him? Did they run when they could, or did the fog take them too? Either way, they were gone and he could do nothing about it. _That’s just the way of things. Everything goes eventually._

When the man rose again, his knees struggled to keep him upright. His back bent like an old, worn bow. The fog thinned and the sky darkened, speckled with stars. He looked up at the wall of colorless feathers. The human blinked slowly, in synch with the White Roc’s breathing. The feathers looked very soft. He wondered if they felt like down fluff or clouds.

The bright white pupils stared into his. The human sighed, too tired to be frightened. He and the Roc blinked together. He watched as the stars vanished behind wings longer than the sky. The wingtips touched the moon and fell upon him. A breeze blew him down, gentle as a nap in a snowstorm.

The man’s eyes closed as dishwater claws folded around him. It didn’t hurt like he’d feared. It didn’t hurt at all. 

 

In the tower of broken mirrors, a golden beacon shone through the fog. Spells for light and levitation are the first a unicorn learns, even before a mark appears. Heartstrings could not raise the sun or tell the moon when to wax and wane but she knew how to make a light in the dark. Ten or twenty years ago, she could make herself bright enough to trouble the Roc’s eyes or at least bright enough to let the human know they hadn’t abandoned him. But she wasn’t a filly anymore, and instead of a tall pillar of light there were only spurts of brightness in a steady, dull glow.

They were coming from the stairwell when it happened. When the talons took the schoolhouse roof away and the tips of feathers made the walls fall open. When the White Roc came down, the mirrors shattered and the steel frame shuddered like a web in the wind, but it did not collapse. Star Swirl had very good taste in watchtowers.

The ponies saw it all from there. The dark clouds of birds and animals in mass exodus. The steady roll of fog conquering the streets. Creatures too slow to outrun the fog dove into the rubble and would not come out. The ancient structures falling into themselves in a chorus of moaning iron when the Roc’s feathers touched them.

Heartstrings never moved her eyes from the green streak darting away, a little leaf twirling in a grey brook. Before the fog rolled in, there was order to it. Tight, planned maneuvers between buildings and sweeping under dumpsters. For a silly little while, Heartstrings thought he might get away. The White Roc wheeled away to knock down high-rises like a bully on the beach, milky mist thickening with every beat of great wings. The human never strayed toward the tower of broken mirrors, and only by that mercy it stood.

The Roc took up the dumpster almost as an afterthought, only tilting its head when the human fell out and scrambled away, then went back to breaking support beams like twigs and clearing potential bolt-holes. The green streak did not seem to notice; he ran on, unraveled with panic, as if the talons scraped at his back. The White Roc only paid the human any mind when he slowed or faltered.

Two hours into the chase, now. The green dot hardly moved at all, slow and easy to catch. The White Roc folded its wings and fell on him like winter: slow, cold, without a sound. Heartstrings held her saddlebag close to her barrel. “T’will end him now, I expect.”

“Don’t be an idiot.” Star Swirl had been so quiet the past two hours Heartstrings forgot he was there. He rested on his knees, beard dangling in the open air as he bent his neck low for a better view. His jaw set in a thin, grim line as wings ate the sky. “You’re too old to be that stupid. Have you not seen the way it pushes the stones inward, so they don’t accidentally fall on him? It could have killed him at any time. Could have snatched him away whenever it wanted to, but it hesitates.”

The human sank into the fog. He quavered and stooped like an elder when he came up again. He didn’t even hold himself up with the staff.

Star Swirl twitched his ears. “Had to weather him down first.”

“Ponyfeathers. He can go longer than this. He ran longer than this just this morning. Humans don’t get tired, they go on forever.” Heartstrings’ voice drooped low as her ears. “It is what they do.”

The fog thinned to mist. The unicorns had a clear view now. The green figure wobbled, bent back crumbling and legs trembling like any other poor creature. In the mist there was nothing mythic or great or terrible or even tragic about him at all, this bizarre assembly of naked legs and arms. No different than a quailing foal in the dark. The sun was setting behind the rolling clouds, sometimes streaks of gold and violet peeked through. The White Roc shifted on its feet and shone like a star.

Star Swirl rose to his hooves and stamped. “If there is nothing he can do, then… then, perhaps _we_  could...”

“Could what?” Heartstrings sighed, breath clouding in the autumn air. “You suppose I could play the Roc t’sleep with a gentle lullaby? Break its heart with a ballad of lost lovers, presuming it’s got a heart t’break?” She shook her head and looked at him. The glow faded from her horn. “You’re right, lad. I’m too old to be foolish. There’s nothing we could do. I’ve only one Talent, and battle magic’s not it. Not yours either, I’m sure.”  

The stallion lashed his tail and turned from her with a snort. Heartstrings watched his face go taut looking at the mist, as if he could will it away with his eyes: the clouds, the Roc, the broken bricks, the bent green back. She knew that look well; the first loss is always the worst. She laid her hoof on Star Swirl’s shoulder but he shrugged it off.

She tried to think of something comforting or wise to say. Instead, she pointed. “Look. It’s over.”

The human had fallen again, green oilskin spilling behind him like a blood trail. The White Roc watched in silence, not even blinking its backwards eyes. When he did not rise again, it took him in its claws and the sky cleared.  

Star Swirl pawed the concrete floor, muttering under his breath. The bells on his cape jingled, though there was no wind. He did not hear Heartstrings moan or the creak of broken towers or his own anxious hooves. He only had ears for the chime of bells, brass and silver and both of them his. Even from this distance, he felt the fabric of the universe shrink from the flap of green dripping from dishwater talons.

Perhaps in the end there was no more to the contradiction creature than any other beast. Perhaps the world would shrug its shoulders and go on without him as if nothing had changed. That is what the world did after the end.

_All things end. That is the nature of things._

Star Swirl glowered. He ran his tongue over his scarred muzzle. His ears twitched at the ghost of a gentle touch. Again, he stamped legs once bound by attercop silk.

_But it is the nature of unicorns to change the nature of things._

Myth and novelty and the White Roc be damned. The human was his friend.

_And it is the nature of hollow bowls to fill._

Something stabbed inside his chest. This time, Star Swirl did not flinch.

Warmth breached his ribs in painfully slow slithers and great rushing waves. It wound tight in his marrow, his blood sang with joy and pain. He never knew a pony could hold so much magic, bright and full and hot as the stars. So many stars stretching out in infinite patterns in his pastern. It needed room to grow.

 Star Swirl felt his hooves lift from the tiles. His back ached and he was blinded by the light behind his eyes. That didn’t matter. He saw what he needed: thick, complex spells coating the moon and subtle enchantments towing tree roots; all the magic making up the sweet silk of the universe. There was a jagged tear in the silk, one the White Roc knew well and would never let go. Not unless that tear was stitched. 

Heartstrings held up a forehoof to shield her eyes from the light pouring from Star Swirl’s eyes and gaping mouth. The blue-white glow lit the edge of his hooves and streamed from his ears and flaring nostrils in hard contours. For a few seconds he floated a few inches from the ground, perfectly still. Then his head bent back and back and back until the tip of his ears touched his shoulders. The threadbare cape snapped at his sides like black flags in a windstorm. There was an unnatural bend to his back and every few seconds his hooves or a hip jerked in ugly spasms, as if yanked by an amateur puppeteer. Over the clear ring of bells, Heartstrings heard the distinctive crack of bones. 

She looked back to the Roc. Without clouds, it seemed smaller: a colorless gyrfalcon the size a noble’s manor or a small mountain. If Heartstrings squinted, she could still see a flap of green held tight against its feathers. She couldn’t decide which disaster to watch.

The air around them became dangerously hot. Scorch marks fizzed and stretched under the stargazer’s hooves like shadows. Sweat beaded on Heartstrings’ coat, but Star Swirl’s was bone dry—he was shivering, in fact. A pained moan slipped through his gritted teeth.

The light dimmed from Star Swirl’s eyes and ears, tightening around his horn. He went slack and hung in midair like an old coat on a hook. The gentle pulse of his mane and tail in an absent wind was the only part of him that moved.

Heartstrings reached out a tentative forehoof. “Um, Star Swi—”

The scorched tiles cracked. Star Swirl snapped his neck back into position.  His horn cut the air in tight swooping motions, more like a needle than a sword. A sleek blue-white comet arced across the sky, true as any arrow. Star Swirl slumped to his knees and went dark.

The Roc stammered in the air. Its white pupils shank from the light or confusion or surprise as it tilted its head to peer at the blaze in its claws. It made the hourglass sound again and clapped its great wings, blowing the light away in bright smoky tendrils. The Roc tilted its head the other way. It clacked its beak once, twice and opened its claws.

The green bundle tumbled into the open air. Heartstrings screamed. On instinct her horn flashed gold and reached for the human.

Her magic caught him.

Too heavy to hold, the glowing oilskin gently lowered down, down, until it rested in a nest of dusty, broken asphalt. The Roc banked low, watching the golden glow and the rubble as it circled what used to be a city. Then it clacked its pearly beak, and lifted back into the sky. It shrank into the distance and was gone.

Star Swirl pulled his thin cape tight around his shoulders and leaned into Heartstrings. Steam drifted off his flanks and his coat was damp and cold. He blinked wearily at her, the seed of a smile on his lips. 

Heartstrings hadn’t moved her eyes from the green bundle. “I caught him.” She said it like a murder confession.

The stargazer rose to his hooves, all his joints popping at once. He followed Heartstrings’ gaze, then looked up at the unfettered sky, full of stars and moonlight and not a cloud in sight. The little smile swelled into a grin. “You did.”

“You’ve done something…”

“Yes.” Star Swirl chuckled under his breath, too merrily for Heartstrings’ comfort.

The mare spun about and ran down the tower of broken mirrors, two stairs at a time.

 

* * *

 

An olive green wyvern, lithe and orange eyed, skittered over the bent, twisted steel. It stepped lightly to avoid the broken glass and jags of shrapnel, dragging a limp wing behind it. Every few steps it paused and anxiously looked for white clouds or the telltale shadows of nestmates. There was an oddly familiar scent in the air. The wyvern poked its nose under a strange lump of cloth, brightly colored in the dusty nest of rubble. It curled its tail happily; good things came in lumps of cloth. Just moments before, the wyvern came upon a smaller grey lump, full of pig meat and a great collection of salt. This new one was much bigger and it was moving, though not very much. The little dragon curiously ran its tongue over its eye and hopped upon the lump, wigging its claws at how the cloth undulated underneath.

A green hoof crashed against the wyvern’s skull, sending it tumbling across the asphalt. The dragon lashed its tail at the horned pony, spitting bile and smoke.

Heartstrings picked up a rock. The wyvern blinked uncertainly, then bunched its broken wings and scuttled into the night.

The mare stomped and tossed her head. “Wretched little dishlicker.” She stomped again and looked to the bundle of green oilskin. It was wrapped tight around itself, trailing off into a wide flap curling in the breeze. Heartstrings danced around it, coming close and shying away again. She would not touch it, afraid of what she’d find.

Star Swirl came trotting up behind her, bright eyed and jingling. He nosed the oilskin cloak and twitched an ear. “He’s unhurt, if that’s what you’re thinking.” He smiled at her fretful face. “I meant to aid him, not end him.”

Heartstrings stared at the pretty white stitches running along the hood. They glowed a soft blue-white. She looked at Star Swirl and said nothing.

“Here, have a look yourself if you don’t believe me.” Star Swirl took the oilskin in his teeth and peeled it back to reveal the sleeping creature inside. “Well.” His pink eyebrows lifted as his smile reached for his ears. “Well! Sun and stars, would you look at that.”

Heartstrings sat beside him, biting her lip. “Oh..” Her eyes drifted from the unicorn to the impossible sight before her, then back again. “Oh, Star Swirl.”

There, curled at their hooves, was a brown little earth pony. A swath of soil-black curls fell over his eyes when he sighed in his sleep. The pony’s slender face was longer than theirs, the jawline rounder than a stallion’s ought to be. The neck was long and tightly muscled. His coat was the color of rust and fallen leaves. The stallion seemed closer to the swift, hungry Mustangian nomads that galloped the open southlands than the bright well-fed ponies of the Nation. His legs tucked snug against him, head bent against his barrel, swaddled like a foal in the soft green cloak. When shadows passed over him, the earth pony shivered.

Heartstrings’ voice was almost too soft to hear. “Star Swirl, what did ye _do_?” She stared at his tired, beaming face. “What’d ye do, lad?”

Star Swirl’s grin shrank a centimeter. “Is it not obvious? I have delivered him from the White Roc. I reached down deep into my well of magic and pulled out the impossible. A miracle, even! What have I done? I… I’ve woven the unweavable.” He chuckled softly to himself. His voice frayed like rope when he spoke again. “I have done what no other unicorn has done, why—why, not even Mimic the Goldshod herself wove such a spell. Oh, and a grand spell it was, and all mine, besides! Dear, sweet Heartstrings, do you understand? There was so much magic and I pulled it from nowhere but myself! I felt it coming in my liver and it did what I tol…I mean, I knew what had to be done and it did it, though I wasn’t absolutely certain of what it was going to do, but…” He trailed off in laughter again. “I saw the world fit together in beautiful ways, I saw how it worked and knew I could shift it about and take it apart and put it back the way I wanted. I did!”

“And ye thought to remake him into a pony? For love of the sun, Star Swirl, why wou— ”

“Star Swirl swished his tail proudly. “Oh, I never planned on a pony, precisely. I only aimed for a creature that would fit into the world, not stick out like a dragon amongst the dragonflies.” He shrugged his shoulders. “To tell it true, I expected a clever tabby cat or a long tailed spider monkey or even a tall, thick-furred alpaca. The stallion is something of a surprise to me, too! But when you think on it, it all makes beautiful sense. I mean, what in the world is humbler, who better fits into the steady earth than the steady earth ponies? A quietly noble and wild tribe, those earth ponies.”

Heartstrings stared at him in disbelief, eyes hard and wide. She could find no words.

Star Swirl rooted in his saddlebags and pulled out a jingling drawstring bag. He fished out a little iron bell and let it roll around in his hooves, taking in the low little knells and the cold scent of iron. “I knew, but I don’t think I ever truly believed it until this moment. Da was wrong. They all were. I’m not hollow!” No more awkward pauses when he passed by. No sympathy glances from his sisters. It felt so good to say, he said it again. “I’m not hollow, Heartstrings. And this time, I’ve a witness and proof.”

It was all a mare could take. Heartstrings’ magic snatched the bell from Star Swirl’s hooves and flung it at him. It bounced off his forehead and off into the night. “Your horn may not be hollow, but your head sure is! I knew noble ponies could be thick-hearted but ye just go above an’ beyond. On me life, Star Swirl, I… I can hardly even look at ye.”

Star Swirl frowned, eyes occasionally drifting from Heartstrings’ face, anxious to see where his bell had gone.

“There are other creatures here aside from yourself, in case ye forgot. Did ye once stop t’think what will happen when he wakes in a body that’s not his own? An’ by magic, of all things?”

“That was the only iron bell I had.” Star Swirl adjusted his cape and turned back to the mare with a huff. “I don’t see why you need to raise such a fuss and stare at me like that. I’ve not harmed him. I saved him, Heartstrings. In the end, that is what matters. True, he may be a bit qualmish when he discovers the vessel has changed but I don’t think that’s any reason to—”

The earth pony’s new ears twitched.

“And keep your voice down,” Heartstrings whispered. “Let him sleep.”

Star Swirl began to say something else, but the minstrel held up a hoof. She gritted her teeth, closed her eyes and took a deep, cleansing breath.

“Star Swirl, dear, let me ask you a question: why doesn’t the Unicorn Kingdom execute criminals?”

“Wait, what?”

“We unicorns aren’t free of ne’er-do-wells. We’ve got our thieves, murderers, an’ kidnappers just like any other society. Commander Maelstrom holds two executions a year and because of it, the Hegemony’s crime rates are less than half the Kingdom’s. King Mohs could do the same, and yet he doesn’t. Why?”

Star Swirl scoffed. “Unicorns are many things, but we are not barbarians. We never trade death for death; nothing deserves that punishment. The dungeons do their job well enough.”

“Not everypony. What of ponies worse than common cutthroats and purse snatchers? What of traitors?”

“Sometimes Mohs orders ponies turned to glass, like when Knight Shade poisoned half of House Sparkler. He stands frozen in Sparkle Hall now, quite aware that at any moment a vengeful niece or daughter might accidentally knock him over.” Star Swirl quickly added, “They won’t, but Knight Shade doesn’t know that. Traitors and other greater criminals are banished.”

“Aye. And what’s banishment involve?”

Star Swirl raised an eyebrow at her. “Banished unicorns are forced from the kingdom into the world t’fend for themselves. Their property—be it dowry, drapes, or doublet vest—is seized by the kingdom and none of their kith or kin is allowed to follow them. The earth ponies want nothing to do with them either, once they see the brand.” He waved a forehoof as he went on, “They may go to the land of griffons or dragons or out to sea with the seaponies, but never among their own. Banished ponies have nothing of theirs. My sister once told me t’would be kinder to be glassed.”

Heartstrings gave Star Swirl a long, long look.

Star Swirl’s ears slowly stood up. He opened and closed his mouth uncertainly, then fiercely pinned his ears back. “And it also has _nothing_  t’do with this.”

Heartstrings blinked at him.

“None at all.”

Heartstrings sat and look at the browning flower petals in her tail. “Well, he’s spared the death sentence at least.”

The brown earth pony groaned like old floorboards. His ears, long and new and unused to movement, wiggled in random directions as he squirmed in the oilskin. A pale hoof reached out, running over the edge of his cloak but unable to get a grip.

The stallion’s eyes—hard and round and dark as beetle shells—blinked open. He grunted, shaking his head as he looked at the naked sky. The pony creased his soft brow and frowned. The breeze tickled the soft fur in his twitching ears. The stagnant scent of oil and rust and clouds of unsettled dust made him sneeze, but under that he smelled the sweetness of leaves and peat. His clothes slogged, heavy and unwieldy, as if he were a child playing in his father’s work suit. Fox paws troubled the rocks and rubble, though he could see no fox.

Star Swirl held a neutral smile the way some folk held their purse in a bad neighborhood. Heartstrings breathed slow and hard and would not look at him at all. The earth pony reached out to assure her he was unhurt—only a little sore and a bit lightheaded—and a hoof slid out of the oilskin.

It was smooth and the pearly pink of a seashell, framed by golden brown fur the same shade as a gingersnap or dead grass…or his skin. The hoof moved when he did. The furry leg curled when he bent his elbow. He wormed another limb out of the fabric. The pale hooves touched each other with a soft little clip-clop. He did it again. The stallion’s pupils shrank to pinpricks. He looked back at himself, so smaller than he should have been, and then looked back to the unicorns.

Heartstrings’ eyes met his. They were gentle and golden, but worn and detached as a pallbearer’s. Star Swirl was suddenly distracted by something in the distance.

The stallion leapt to his hind legs, only for the ground to slip out under his feet. He bucked and rolled, thrashing his way out of the cloak swaddling him. The cuffs of his pants twisted around his ankles, thick cloth ripped and flopped uselessly as he fought his way up again. The pony wavered on his hind legs, a puddle of trousers sliding off his flanks, and then crashed in a flailing heap of cloth and hooves.    

Star Swirl exchanged a look with Heartstrings. She lit her horn and he took the tunic in his teeth and they pulled together. The cloth stretched and tore and warped like caul until the earth pony wormed out. The unicorns backed away from the bundle of legs thrashing at the air.

The earth pony froze. His coat rippled as if the muscles underneath tried to fight their way out. The pale hooves slipped over themselves, over the heaving barrel and swiveling ears, over the slim muzzle and curved poll and shaking withers. Again, he roused, stumbled, and crumbled. His knees and fetlocks bent towards him, trying to hold himself, but the hooves did not know how. Cold sweat plastered his mane to the side of his neck. The short, curly tail clamped tight between his legs.

The stallion’s mouth fell open and trembled. His voice wrenched, contorted, and broke in his throat. He hadn’t screamed in his nightmares. He didn’t scream in the cage of thorns or at the leaping manticore or when the White Roc fell upon him.  

He screamed now. It was a sound of blood and ash.

The earth pony dug his flat teeth into his leg until it bled. He stared at it a moment, then dove for his hoof, biting and ripping and pulling at the skin of his fetlock, as if he might find a wrist, a hand, a fingernail hiding underneath. Wet, choked keening muffled in his mouth.  

Heartstrings curled beside him and nuzzled his neck. “Don’t.”

A crooked, lonely croak wilted in the stallion’s throat. He bent his head and closed his eyes against the sight of himself.

“I know,” the minstrel whispered. She softly licked the back of his ears, the way she had for Wildwood fawns. “I know, but please don’t.”

The earth pony stared blankly at her. Slowly he took his teeth from his fetlock and pulled the bloody thing under his barrel. When his breathing was back to normal, the pony lifted his thick neck and stared empty-eyed at Star Swirl.

Star Swirl flicked his pink tail and stared back. His eyes trembled, but the rest of him calm as the flat sea. A thin sheen of magic clung to the edge of his long horn. For a time, it seemed both stallions had forgotten how to speak.

“’Tis not forev—”

“How.” The earth pony’s voice was acrid and flat. 

“How?” Star Swirl blinked. “Well, um. I expect the distance between us kept the magic from cancelling itself out and the spell itself spun from necessity and want. Tis something like what moved the Rainbow in the Old World and a little like an illusion spell, but not.” He shrugged awkwardly. “The Roc would not be fooled by sight alone.”

“No. _How_? We’re friends. How could…” the stallion glanced at himself and struggled to keep his voice steady. He could smell his own terror. “Star Swirl, what…what have you done to me?”

“T’was the only way,” the stargazer told him. “If there was any other, I’d have done it.”

“You could have left me to the White Roc. You could have let me rot in my chains and thorns.”

“It would have been a short, bitter life. Behind those thorns, you’d have wasted under the whip and died.”

“And died in my own skin! I would have died as myself. The Roc was unimaginable but at least I would have been with my own at the end. I don’t fit in this body. I can’t stay this way, Star Swirl.” The earth pony stared at his haunch in new, quiet terror. “I can’t.”

“And stay this way you won’t.” Star Swirl did his best to smile. “Fear not, I can change you back.”

“But won’t.”

“I can and I will!” A slew of defenses crawled into Star Swirl’s mouth but the only one that came out. “Just… not now.”

“When?” The little earth pony slowly wobbled to his hooves, splaying out all four legs to keep his footing. He stared the bearded unicorn in the eye. “When, Star Swirl? When your magic returns to you at random or when you decide the time is right? Will you shift my bones back into place next winter, when the other unicorns push the moon into solstice? Will you give back my hands before kudzu rolls over my library?”

The stallion bunched his shoulders and stumbled forward. He leaned on Heartstrings, unable to go any further. “Why can’t you leave things as they are? Couldn’t you stand to leave just _one_  thing in peace?! You’ve mangled so much of the world already.” The pony buried his nose in the torn grey tunic. It belonged to his father, once. It was white once, too.

Star Swirl sighed and pursed his lips. “I did not lie to you before. Nopony can truly change anything into what it is not. Not even I. You are still yourself.” The neutral smile returned. “It’s just a new coat to get through the Caulkins. T’will all be for the best. It doesn’t seem so now, but trust me when I say that you’re a lucky fellow.”

The earth pony lifted his head. A chilled, quiet fury coiled in his dark eyes. He blinked slowly and dared for the unicorn to continue. "I remember the last time a unicorn caged me and called it kindness.” The little pony’s voice was soft and full of daggers. “I was very selfish.”

"I..." Star Swirl shrank in his cape. "It won't be for too long. You must trust me."

The earth pony flattened his ears. "I did."

Heartstrings flinched from him. It wasn’t his anger that startled her, she expected that part. But there was something in the way he stood, in the bend of his thick neck. How his hooves dug into the dirt, as if he owned it and everything that touched it before he did. The trembling sapling legs didn’t matter; Star Swirl could have changed the human into wind or snow or seven notes of music and Heartstrings would know it was him.

The new bones and skin and tail made him no more a pony than wearing leather boots made him a bull. Magic had touched him, but magic alone couldn’t hold him forever. He shone through his fur like the sun behind smoked glass. For the first time, Heartstrings remembered why they were once lords of the earth. 

Star Swirl never broke his gaze, though his withers were unsettled and he pawed at the asphalt. He took a deep, calibrating breath. “More to the point, we do not have many alternatives. Even if I could change you back here and now, where would we be? Do you suppose General Yarak would simply lounge atop the peaks whilst we meandered about his mountain range? The Roc would cut you off again, just as before. Unless you know some way to oppose him.”

The earth pony flared his nostrils, but the fire had gone out of him. “No… no, I couldn’t. I don’t think any person could and I’m sure greater ones than I have tried.” He knocked away a slab of rubble. A lamp head wrapped in kudzu rocked underneath it. “I wanted to know what became of the other humans. I am sure now the White Roc has them all, but there’s nothing I can do for them. Nothing useful, anyway.”

He tapped the glass bulb with his bloody forehoof and looked around him at the empty spaces where towers of iron and concrete used to be. The pony wondered what became of his pigeons. Did Fines and One-Way lay eggs already? Did the cats discover how to get in the aviary? The library probably needed re-roofing. Without a roof, the rain would ruin the books.

"You can have it," the earth pony said.  

Star Swirl lifted his eyebrows, taken aback at the gentle tone. "Pardon?"

"The world. You can have it." He shrugged with an empty smile. “I’m not foolish; I know when something’s lost and I know when something isn’t mine to claim. And that’s okay, I can accept that. I can go back to my own little patch of earth with a thin, tame river and an empty mall. It isn’t a fancy city, it never was. It’s old and ugly and rotting but it is mine. All I’ve ever had was my name, my home, and the skin I was born in. That’s enough.”

“But you’ve come so far.” Heartstrings came behinds him, peering over his shoulder. “We’re but two days from the Caulkin Mountains, maybe less. Think of what spurred you t’leave in the first place.”

He glanced back at her. “I left,” he said, “because I realized that when I died there’d be no one left to bury me. But there are worse things.” The earth pony shook the dust from his coat and stepped towards Star Swirl. The unicorn was a few inches taller than him, now. “Let me go home, Star Swirl. I’m very tired and I’ve been gone a long time. Let me go.”

Star Swirl only sighed and looked away. The brown pony quietly watched him mull and squirm and fight with himself.

When it became clear the unicorn would not look at him again, the earth pony came closer. His back legs slipped and he nearly fell, but he caught himself and steadied into a walk. “Please. I don’t want to die in this body. I’m scared."

Star Swirl’s eyes softened, but he still said nothing. 

The earth pony glanced back as Heartstrings draped the oilskin cloak, two sizes too big, over his withers. Her eyes were smiling.

 “What?”

“You’re standin’.” She wet a bit of cloth and brushed the mussed mane from his eyes. “Been walking and standing on your own more than five minutes, now.”

The stallion twitched his ears and looked at his hooves. “Oh.” He brightened a little.

“And the good news is we won’t have to walk far. A tavern’s not far, methinks. Look, ye can see the lights already.” She nosed his ear. “And you can sleep in a decent bed for once.”

 Heartstrings took a few steps forward and inclined her head. The brown pony shrugged and followed, leaning against her shoulder in case his footing should slip again. Star Swirl came up to support his other side, but the stallion shied from him.

 “Do not touch me.”

Star Swirl’s ears drooped, but his pace didn’t falter. Without looking at either of them he said, “You won’t. If you believe nothing else I tell you, believe that. You have my word: you will not die in this body.”

The earth pony swiveled an ear in the stargazer’s direction but did not acknowledge him further.

Star Swirl tried to think of something else to say, but something stopped him. He’d stepped on something hard and round. He lifted a hoof to discover a little iron ball hidden in the dirt; the bell he’d lost. He plucked it out and dusted it off. The bell made no sound. Not a jingle or a tinkle, not even an ugly old rattle.

The stargazer frowned and shook it again. Silent as stone. He squinted between the hairline cracks in the metal. The clapper had fallen out. The bell was hollow.  


	13. The Grey Land

Crows scattered into the wet air as the pegasus banked low and landed upon the cliff side. Her legs were already running before her hooves touched the rocks, tunnels and grottos echoing with urgent, eager hoofbeats. She flicked in and out of caverns and fluttered around stalagmites, huffing frustration. Her chest heaved from the two minute and thirty acre flight, seizing gulps of thick air before dashing from the caves.

The mare tightened her legs and vaulted into the sky in a tight vertical streak. She struggled the bizarre, defiant clouds full of tumult and sun and hail and rain (always, always, rain) before she finally found him at the razor edge of the same cliff where she’d seen him last, three months ago.

The pegasus’ eyes would not be still, flitting behind and below and around her, not with caution but excitement. They flashed behind her helmet like the edge of a hungry, forge-fresh sword.

“Sir!”

The stallion sitting in the downpour did not look at her or incline his ear. Water dripped from his jawline like stalactites, little waterfalls slid down the hard edge of his bones and the crooked crevices of folded wings. The occasional rise and fall of his chest was the only sign he lived at all.

The mare fidgeted behind him, remembering to flatten her wings in respect only at the last moment. “Sir, there are strangers here. At our borders, I mean—three of them. Coming from the west.”  

“Strangers,” the stallion said, “can be found everywhere. Our borders are no exception. It is not an exceptional event.”

“These strangers are stranger than most, sir.”

“In what way?”

“I…” The mare opened and closed her mouth, rustling her soaked wings. The fire in her belly shrank into embers. “I do not yet know. It is a…feeling I have.”

The other pegasus was silent.

“There are two unicorns, a mare of considerable age and a young stallion that bears a bright and noble color. The mare also appears to be a nudist. I do not believe them to be tradesponies, entertainers, emissaries, or vagabonds. I do not believe them to be lost, for they do not behave as such. Their steps are resolute, but not without caution. I observed them for some time, sir. It is my opinion that it is their intent to be here.”

The stallion either scoffed or sighed. Perhaps both. “It is never anyone’s _intent_  to be here, girl.”

The mare’s wings fidgeted upon her armor but she did not argue.

It was ten minutes before he spoke again. “You said there were three ponies. What of the third?”

“I do not know, sir. He wore a great cloak of evergreen that concealed all of the head and body.”

“How are you aware of the gender if the pony was concealed?”

“I misspoke, sir. The subject is unused to the terrain, moreso than the others. Often slips and wobbles upon the rocks and goes very slowly. The subject’s head was lowered and shoulders sloped as I observed him. When he does not wobble upon the rocks, he slogs across them. Both unicorns tightly flanked him in a manner not unlike the way of guards. Initially, it was my belief the cloaked pony was their prisoner.”

The stallion blinked slowly. A wet eat leaned in the mare’s direction.

“However, after further observation, I believe that assessment to be incorrect. The unicorns do not behave as guards of any sort. They chaff and speak of inconsequential matters and they are unobservant. Neither of them noted my flight over them, even when I did not have the benefit of cloud cover. The shrouded pony is important, but I do not know in what way. The stallion was exceptionally careful and respectful of him.” The mare shook excess water from her mane. “It seemed unusual. It was my opinion that you ought to be informed, sir.”

The stallion in the rain slowly blinked again and turned his ear away. He readjusted himself upon the cliff, rolling his pointed shoulders as he stared out into the sky.

The mare leaned forward anxiously. The embers sparked in her chest again. “Well, sir? Shall I engage them? Interrogate them? Observe further and report?” An eager, shameful smile flickered across her face. “I am… not fully aware of the protocol for this occasion.”

“It is of no consequence to me what it is you do. Engage them if you like or leave them to fall between the crags. Either way, their intent, if there is one at all, will be clear in time.” His nose sniffed at distant thunder. “You are dismissed. I have been informed.”

The pegasus flicked her sopping tail, flexing her wings in and out as she bunched her shoulders. There was more to report, but she did not know how to arrange the words. She did not have the precise language to describe the odd well of interest surrounding these strangers. The chill in the hollow of her bones when the shrouded stranger moved in ways a pony should not move. The illogical instinct to stay and watch them for a long time. It was all very strange and she did not like it at all.

The older pony’s voice spiked. “I have been _informed_ , girl.”  

The mare sighed, inclining her wings and ears. “Yes, sir.” She shook the water from her wings and slowly lifted into the air. She flew several yards away before stopping to hover a few moments. In a quieter voice, she asked, “Will you be at dinner, father?”

“You may go,” the stallion said again.

“Yes, sir.”

He did not watch her go, but knew she was gone. A frost bit at his ears and the north wind bent and shrieked along the peaks, as if it had cut itself upon the sharp ledge. He slowly bent his bones and stood, hooves gripping the slivered edge between rock and sky. His wings lifted slowly and let the breeze lift and batter them.

The stallion closed his eyes and breathed deep. His ears were tall and stiff, swiveling as they followed the wind. He sat in the rain this way until the gale died down and the preemptive sun crept over the clouds.

His eyes squinted, unused to the light, as they ran over the wide, curved mouth of the Caulkins. Three figures moved through grey rain in a grey land, flinching at stones in their hooves.

General Yarak blinked. “Hm. Stranger than most, she says.” He turned and retreated into the high caves. He did not bother to shake off the rainwater.

 

* * *

 

It rained the afternoon they arrived.

It rained every afternoon in those mountains. It rained every evening and morning and midnight, too. It rained in unbroken, steady downpours and violent thunderstorms and feral cloudbursts and sheets of drizzle so thin it could be mistaken for mist.

On tepid summer nights, clouds pelted the peaks with sheets of sleet and hail clattered upon the roof tiles. Winter was prone to drought, with clammy fog and heatbursts. Dust storms rolled across all times of year, dragging along lightning laden clouds and firestorms behind them like petulant children. In spring, landspouts sprouted like daisies and come autumn, everypony boarded up their windows for hurricanes. None of the mountain ponies had ever seen snowfall, though there was a small, unmelting pile of snow just behind the farrier’s house and nopony knew how it got there. Still, through firestorm and fog and fair sunny skies, there was rain.

The range composed of five great peaks curving inwards to face each other like spiteful in-laws at a deadlocked dinner table. The outermost mountains lay upon opposite ends, squat and wide and smooth as upturned bowls. Twisted, naked trees lined themselves out alongside modest little cottages in odd, random patterns. Ribbons of tan road wrapped around the sides and wound to make way for frothing, unbridled brooks.

At their side, twin spires shot into the sky in cruel jags arced inwards in dramatic swoops to resemble the tip of a manticore’s tail. Waterfalls slid through the crevices like dead hair. Slick, glassy patches of frost or mud waited for clumsy hooves or careless foals as little canyons pockmarked with potholes and shards of ragged stone yawned to catch them. Clumps of dirt and dust scattered about the rock face in some half-hearted imitation of a road running under the mouths of hungry caves. Dusty earth ponies rotated in and out of the caverns, the saddlebags and baskets hanging on their sides full of various rocks. Others pulled great carts spilling over with shovels, nails, metals, coals, candle wax, pickaxes, and blankets. The ponies went along steadily, calmly moving aside for the usual rock slides. Some were shadowed by spindly foals carrying lamps or lunchpails in their mouths. A belch of dark smoke drifted into the sky from parts unknown.

All four mountains lay in the shadow of the great monolith in the center. Sill was easily larger than the others put together and could be seen as far away as Conemara on a clear day, a slab of angled rock breaking up the symmetry of the horizon. The top could not be seen from the ground or sky, obscured as it was by great cauliflower clouds. The size, however, was the only remarkable thing about it. It was neither jagged nor smooth, bearing few landmarks save for an unusually green patch near the bottom that was only visible if one squinted very hard and angled their head at the right time. It was composed of flat ridges, easy hoof-holds, and sheer cliffs good for climbing and even better for landing, miles of empty tunnel running through the heart of it. Shrikes and hawks nested in the cliffs and snakes coiled deep in the rocks to sleep through winter as goats traversed the high rocks. The base spread and stretched, softly curving to hug the acres of flatland below, filmed with yellowing grass. Homes and taverns and other little buildings trailed down the middle of Sill, fanning down to spread into a slate roofed village.

From above, the five mountains resembled a great cloud-studded horseshoe hung by the wrong end; a luckless place for luckless ponies resolved to a quiet, grey, grassless life under smith smoke and rain-thick clouds.

Fifty years ago, three griffon clans met each other at the needle tip of Sill. For ten days and ten nights they spilled blood, burned bridges, and rolled out all their generational grudges and debts; they slashed at one another with beak and talon and sword and broken bottles and biting implications of patriarch impotence for their own clan’s right to nest in the peaks and give the mountain range its name. Thirty-five years ago, after two and a half seconds of thought, the little ponies glanced at the nails in their shoes, shrugged, and named it Caulkin.

The brown earth pony saw none of it. His half-lidded eyes stuck to the ground, watching for sharp pebbles and slicks of mud. The new legs still wobbled when they tried to move too quickly and could not find stable footing in terrain that constantly conspired to trip him. The soaked oilskin stuck fast to his sides and dragged behind him like a dragon tail. The stallion went along in the manner of sleepwalkers, unconscious of the world as the body acted of its own accord as concerned acquaintances gathered near, wondering if it was dangerous to wake him.

The only clear thought that passed over him was the occasional bitter memory of boots. His boots would have had no trouble at all. But thinking of boots made a path to thoughts he preferred to ignore. The pony refocused on putting one hoof in front of the other.

 Heartstrings grumbled beside him, pausing every few minutes to shake the rain off. She went along only a little easier than the earth pony, flinching at sharp stones and tripping over lemming holes. “How anypony can manage to live in this rotten place I’ll never know.” The mare balanced on three legs to examine the ruddy underside of her forehoof. “I’ll be havin’ naught but bloody little stumps when this is all over.”

 Star Swirl’s voice perked from behind her. “You may have a better time of it if you gave heed to where you placed your hooves.” They were the first words he’d spoken to anypony in two days. Since he passed under the shadows of the ruined city, the stargazer had become unnaturally quiet. He trailed a few paces behind his companions, hanging in the back while Heartstrings engaged fellow travelers on the road for directions or conversation. When he did speak, it was in hushed, jumbled murmurs meant only for himself.

Early that morning, as they came under the shadow of Sill, for a small moment a part of himself came back to him. The sheer scope of the peaks and the odd shape of the range brought up his head and his ears twitched eagerly as the breeze rubbed against them. As he craned his neck, a colony of homeward bound fruit bats shot over their heads and Star Swirl exclaimed at the shine of their soft strawberry skins and stubby kiwi tails. The bats made a swift rainbow arc into the stone heart of Sill, Star Swirl trotting under them, ready to scale the whole mountain right then and there. Then the brown earth pony lightly glanced at him from under his hood and the unicorn fell back and became quiet again.

Heartstrings made a grand show of rolling her eyes. “It’s not a matter of seein’ the rocks, Star Swirl. Seein’ em don’t keep ‘em from pokin’ into my hoof.”

Star Swirl rolled his eyes back. “Have you tried simply stepping _over_  the rocks instead?”

 “I canna step around the sharp rocks when all the ground’s made of wee, sharp rocks.” She rolled her shoulders and groaned. “And all this rain doesn’t agree with my joints either.”

“Anyway, the locals likely wear shoes. If we’re to stay here—and stay we will for at least the better part of winter; I can’t imagine a hoard of cached humans are an easy find—we ought to get some shoes ourselves.” Star Swirl tapped the ground with one of his own nickel shoes, a rusty leftover from his days pulling carnival carriages. “I’m astounded my own haven’t torn themselves off yet.”

The earth pony glanced down at his own hooves, sore but uninjured in spite of walking the same spiky terrain as Heartstrings.

The mare looked as well, sighing to herself, “Oh, if only for young earth pony legs.”

“Even those tough earth hooves won’t last long here,” said Star Swirl. “‘Tis either a shoe or a bloody stump.”

Heartstrings’ face screwed up into a maze of wrinkles and gritted teeth. “Nails stabbed into me foot or rocks scarin’ up me foot. Might as well ask which eye I want the knife stuck in.”

The earth pony stiffened, pulling a forehoof to his chest. “Nails?”

The unicorns turned as one, unused to the sound of his voice.

“Shoeing’s, not at all an awful ordeal, though our far Heartstrings seems to disagree. The shoe is nailed in, yes, but you hardly feel it at all. ‘Tis no worse than wearing a heavy yoke or getting a manecut.”

Heartstrings squirmed, running her hoof through her mane, a long mess of damp curls, tangled by the wind. “Oh aye, _that_  makes it sound so much better. Ye know, if ponies were meant t’walk on rocky ground we’d have been born with tougher hooves. As I told ye, tis not a place fit for ponies.” She stepped away from the earth pony and shook rainwater from her coat.

“Is there anything you know about it?” the brown stallion asked.

“Nothing ye canna see for yourself already. A harsh place with hard rains but little grass or smilin’. There was rumor a dustup in this part of the world between the earth ponies and pegasi a few years back, but who knows if it were these mountains, presumin’ there’s any truth to it at all. Ponies of the earth don’t have bad blood with ponies of the air the way they do with unicorns.”

“The farther a land is from the Kingdom, the hazier accounts become. Especially when it concerns lands we don’t trade with.” Star Swirl looked up at a violet mare herding a mass of banded ore down a cliff. A trio of foals scrambled ahead of her, rolling stray deposits back into place and watching the areas above and below. One caught Star Swirl looking at her and stuck out her little red tongue.

Heartstrings twitched her ears. “Seein’ the mountains now, it seems we ought to. We’ve walked the thick of the Caulkins but an hour and already it is plain there’s much to be had here. Especially concernin’ what a skinflint old Mohs has become the past few years.” She paused as a bright shape flicked in the sky, just outside her line of sight. “I suppose the terrain’s too much trouble.”

“The king’s not interested in coals and ores. Not during peacetime. Besides, the Nation’s other, more hospitable stone refineries besides this one, I’m sure. Our lot favors gems over metals these days.” Star Swirl followed Heartstring’s eye upwards, where a shadowy silhouette flicked over the clouds. “Still, tis something of an oddity.”

A shadow passed over the earth pony’s head. His lean muzzle poked out of the hood as he angled his neck.

Heartstrings smirked. “Don’t look now, lads but we’ve eyes upon us.”

A pegasus lurked in the low clouds just above their heads. From the sharp, rounded muzzle and slender legs, it appeared to be a mare. She was clad from throat to gaskin in armor the murky, thin white of diluted milk, the croupiere flaring out in the shape of a lily; a style thirty years out of date. The emblem of a viceroy was inscribed upon the peytral and it heaved with the soft movements of her chest. The barding hung on her shoulders and flanks like a shrunken secondhand scarf, at once too big and too small. Only the helmet fit correctly. The mare’s coat was the lonely, bold yellow of a cloudy sunrise and her short tail a mess of frizz, windswept and sea-green. She lounged like a leopard, slowly rising from the wet grey fluff when the ponies looked up at her.

Star Swirl raised his pink eyebrows.

The pegasus flicked her tail.

Heartstrings waved.

The pegasus glowered.

The brown earth pony stretched his neck. He lowered his hood to get a better look, squinting at the bits of gold and green in the roll of white and grey.

The pegasus pricked her ears, then slammed them against her head before slowly bringing them up again. She squared her shoulders and stooped over the edge of the cloud, wings spread wide to show steel blades glinting at the edge of her primary feathers. The earth pony’s eye caught her own and her glower deepened.

The stallion in the oilskin slowly blinked his flat, dark eyes and tilted his head slightly. He smiled, no more intimidated than a cat among crickets, observing the mare with the mild interest he gave to squirrels skirting across telephone wires.

It was the pegasus who looked away first. She turned from them with a toss of her head, gobs of cloud fluff flying from her shoulders. Her wings flexed at her sides as if to take flight, but held fast to her sides. The feather blades hissed against her armor. The glare simmered as she sank deeper into the cloud, out of their sight but not hers.

The earth pony flicked an ear. “So. That is a pegasus pony?”

“Oh, yes.” Star Swirl lashed his bright tail. His eyes set upon the flat sprawl of grey swallowing the cloud. “With such rankled airs? ‘Tis no doubt of it.”

“Hm. I thought they would be bigger.” He shrugged off the eyes in the cloud and pulled up his hood.

“Most of their sort runs small.”

“Aye, lithe and light. Much like their arrows.” Heartstrings spared another glance for her bleeding hoof before she set it moving again. “But in me younger years, I’ve seen a fair share of pegasus warriors match the size of your earth ploughers. Fellows ‘bout a head or two taller than yourself with a big fuss of feathers at the ends of their legs. Draft ponies they called themselves, on account of the shivers they’d give the enemy.” She smiled to herself. “Met a company of ‘em when I was a filly. Got us a great bushel of oats in exchange for me kin gettin’ him out of the woods. Nice fellows.”

“How do they fly if they’re so big?”

“Pure bullheadedness, I expect.” Heartstrings glanced towards the clouds and laughed. “ _You_  try tellin’ a pegasus what he can and cannae do. I’ll be glad to mend your stitches.”

The rain petered into a misty drizzle as the afternoon eased into early evening. The sky would not let the sun in. Hazy, wounded reds and oranges seeped through a gauze of clouds to cast the land in a murky light.

The earth pony’s shoulders squirmed. Eyes itched at his back, mild sunburn compared to the searing gaze of the White Roc, but bothersome nonetheless. The cloud was not the only place he felt it. As the three of them came into the full bend of the Caulkins, where homes and taverns and smithies sulked in Sill’s jagged shadow. Silhouettes skittered behind flickering curtains and foals stuck closer to their fathers’ legs. Thick-boned stallions looked up in their yokes as the blushing lushes peered bleary-eyed and sullen from their hiding holes. The new earth pony fidgeted under his cloak; it felt like baby spiders crawling over his eartips.

 A brindle long-faced mongrel loped several paces behind them, wagging its tail as it chuffed or growled or whined under its breath. It skittered forward when the earth pony looked back at it, only to yap and back away a moment later. The dog paced back and forth, never coming another pace closer or farther, even when a stick was tossed at it. The stallion nickered. On instinct, his hoof rummaged in the cloak for his knives or staff. The hoof shook when it came away empty. The earth pony swallowed hard. He pressed against Heartstrings until he felt the mare’s ribs dig into his.

A sharp whistle sounded from one of the houses. The mongrel brought up its ears. The whistle shrieked again, harsher this time. With one last mewling bark at the travelers, the dog turned and rambled into an open doorway where a soot-freckled foal caught it. Heartstrings smiled her thanks as the brown stallion leaned against her with a sigh. The sooty filly stuck her tongue out at them.

“Rude.” Heartstrings flicked her tail. “I’d suggest asking directions for lodging, but the way some of these ponies are eyeballing us, I expect we’d fetch a rock peltin’ instead.” She took a careful look around and lowered her voice. “Star Swirl, ye don’t suppose that maybe…” her eye flicked on and over the earth pony. “That maybe they can tell? About him?”

Star Swirl kept his neck straight and his eyes humble, never lingering on anypony more than a moment. “Possible. Certainly the brindle hound could tell, dogs have a way with him. But I expect ‘tis another sort of pony the locals have their eye on.”

“This place isn't the pick of the litter for vacationing unicorns I expect.”

“Nor tradesponies. I can’t imagine the nightmare of lugging carts around these cliffs.”

Something puffed softly above them. Then again. _Puff-piff-puff-puff-ploff._ The sound of hooves upon a cloud, then hooves kicking off from one. The unicorns looked up. The earth pony kept his head where it was.

 The armored mare hovered a foot or three above them, close enough to see the green bite of her pinched eyes. She hummed with a youthful hummingbird buzz instead of the strong, steady wingstrokes expected of a grown pegasus. The steeled feathers slid and chattered against each other like teeth.

The earth pony’s hood slogged over his head as he looked behind, still on watch for the brindle dog. He may as well have not seen her at all, though he surely knew she was there for all the racket of her wings.  

The pegasus snorted and pawed at the air.

For a long, awkward moment the three of them just stared at each other like toads on a log. Heartstrings felt the seconds roll over her like tumbleweeds. Finally, she stamped the ground. “ _Well_? D’ye have a reason for coming down or are ye just plannin’ to goggle at us like an oil painting all night?”

The pegasus began speaking a moment before the old mare finished. “What is your business here? Why have you breached our borders?” Her voice was airy and smooth, sparking from the scarred, creaking armor like grass shoots in snow. “What will be the extent of your stay?”

Star Swirl turned over the answer in his head for several seconds, dusting off the protocol for inter-tribal arrangements kept in the back of his head (due north east of yew recipes, next to the crude limericks). He glanced at his companions, then back to the armored mare. “Upon whose authority do you ask?”

“I represent the commander of these mountains, General Yarak.” She thought a small moment before pointing out, “The Caulkin Mountains fall under the wings of the Empire.”

Heartstrings’ head popped over Star Swirl’s shoulder. “They’re an Empire now? Since when?” Star Swirl whispered back in a voice too loud to be a whisper, “You’ve got me. Last I heard, the tribe was fiercely isolationist.”

“We have expanded.” The pegasus dipped low, the tip of her tail brushing Star Swirl’s horn. “These mountains were rightfully wrenched from the claws of the griffon emperor. The pegasus tribe commands the range, in addition to the highlands north of the Earth Pony Nation and south of the Frostlands, _jus ad bellum_.”

Heartstrings cocked a white eyebrow and tilted her head towards the earth ponies mulling across the mountains. “Ye’d think a pegasus territory to have more pegasi. Those ponies stick to each other like honey on cake, I cannae imagine less than a score of them in one place.” She tapped her chin in thought. “Of course, the rest of them could just be lurkin’ about in the clouds o’er our heads. They’re pegasi after all.”

The armored mare snorted. “Do not change the subject. None of you have answered or addressed my question.”

“And why would we?” Star Swirl stroked his beard casually, a low, clever light in his eye. He inclined his horn to the mare’s armor. “You’ve no official notches in your plates, no marks of rank, nothing to assure us that you are indeed who you say you are. Why, for all we know, you’re just some renegade in purloined armor. Our business is not with you. If you come on behalf of General Yarak, we will answer to the general himself.”  

The mare hung in the sky, the edge of her mouth twitching uncertainly. She took a slow look at the arching mountain behind her. The drizzle plinked and tinked on the armor like a foal’s tin drum. “General Yarak is on Mount Sill. If you wish to meet him then you will scale the mountain and meet him.”

Star Swirl followed her line of sight. Sill arched for miles and miles upwards and across. She may as well have said he’d meet them in a dry part of the Arabian desert. “Uh. Meet us _where_?”

The mare smirked. “Where he pleases. I suggest you begin the trek now. Darkness falls in three hours and footing is hazardous in the dark. Especially for the elderly.” She pointedly looked at the oilskin hood. “As well as those in cumbersome clothing.”

With this, the pegasus dipped and zipped back into the sky and soon all that could be seen of her was the gold flash of her coat against the grey rainclouds.

“Mount Sill in three hours.” Star Swirl shrugged, ignoring the dirty looks his companions gave him. “Could be worse, I suppose.”

The earth pony stayed Heartstrings’ hoof before she threw another rock.  

 

* * *

 

They expected the mountain air to thin and chill and icy teeth of the wind stabbing their skin. With all this rain, they expected the sheets of frost over the rocks and snow dusting the sides. But here, upon the crags almost at Sill’s midpoint where the dripping sun reddened their backs, it was not that way at all. The air was thick and warm and weighed on them like a juice press.

The brown little earth pony let the hood fall to his shoulders. Sweat dripped from his mane. He sat back on his haunches and gasped for breath. His coat boiled under the oilskin. When he breathed it felt as if a hot, soggy towel was draped over his muzzle.

At least he didn’t stumble anymore. His legs only wobbled from weariness of the climb, no more frail tremblings from unuse. His hands had almost become used to being hooves, though they still slipped and poked at stones, fumbling to get a grip with fingers that were not there. He still felt his knuckles and carpal bones and the delicate webwork of nerves laying dormant under the hoof. All there but unreachable, almost as if his hands had fallen asleep.

The slick rocks shimmered beside his mud-caked hooves. Here, at Sill’s midpoint, the houses, the carts, the goats, even the voles and weasels thinned away. Orange lamplights dotted below them like piles of embers at the base of Sill, but he did not trust himself to look down at them without losing his nerve. Heartstrings walked among those lights, using all her skill in song and sweet grace to scout out a place for them to spend the night. It was the sensible decision. A full day of walking the Caulkins was more than enough for the unicorn and had she come, she’d have slowed them down with precious little daylight already.

The earth pony sighed. Even so, he wished Heartstrings had come up with them. He missed her complaints and idle humming. A gulf of silence spread between the stallions where Heartstrings’ voice used to be. The steady clop of light unicorn hooves echoed behind him, a crisp chime of bells with each step. Every so often a flash of pink or blue or black drifted into the earth pony’s line of sight, then drifted out again. Sometimes the hooves behind him stopped or slowed and the earth pony waited for the stargazer to catch up. When he heard the flutter of a cape, he trudged on without a glance behind him.

The earth pony wondered how much farther they had to go. He looked up at the slab of unbroken rock jutting above his head. The sheets of grey languid cloud seemed close enough to touch. He felt his stomach crawl into his throat. He pushed it back down and shook himself. _They are only clouds. Common as any rock or crow feather. They are only clouds._ A skinny crow landed a few feet away, troubling the pebbles at its claws. The pony nickered, shifting on his hooves and twitching his nose.

There was a chilled undercurrent in the lurking somewhere in the muggy air, as if someone cut a hole in the sky and let in the breeze. There was a quiet rumbling, humming sound in the air—not quite thunder and not quite wind. The earth pony stopped walking and swiveled his ears to catch the sound, but it was long gone.

Star Swirl came up on his left shoulder and met his eye in a wary, knowing blink. He’d heard it too. When the earth pony did not shake him off or move away, the stargazer crept closer, their tense shoulders a hair's breadth of each other.

There was a stir of movement in the rock. No, it was the rock itself that moved.

The rocks that were not rocks at all rose from the mountain and the pegasus came into sharp and sudden focus. There was no telling how long he had been there, waiting in plain sight. If not for Star Swirl nearly stepping on him they'd have passed him by entirely. Even now, it was difficult to mark the pegasus as a pegasus and not a rock formation in the shape of one.

He was gaunt and sharp at all edges, scimitar ribbed and citadel skulled, his backbone a line of turrets. Wrinkles fanned along his face like the many, many lines of a map. A cataract gray mane spiked down his neck, flayed out at the shoulders and dripping rainwater. He was not the shade of the mountain. The mountain was the shade of him. If the stallion had lived for five score and eight years, Star Swirl would have been amazed he was so young.

The earth pony glanced him over, watching the flex of his wings. For a moment he saw a bare patch in the ragged feathers, in the crook of his right wing. A series of round little scars. The brown stallion edged in for a closer look, but the wind nipped his ear and pulled his attention away.

Star Swirl cleared his throat. “Greetings. We come seeking General Yarak, keeper of these mountains.”

“You have found him.” The words crawled in a jagged, subterranean rumble. “Who seeks him?”

A streak of yellow flashed through grey clouds. The armored mare swooped low to perch upon a cliff ledge a few feet above their heads. She tucked in her wings and lightly inclined her head.

“You have met Sunshower already,” the general added.

“I...” The stargazer flicked a hesitant ear. He’d prepared a speech for when the time for this encounter came, carefully molded to politely fit customs and to sidestep suspicion. Meeting the general now, the bottom fell out, the words were lost to him, and the truth was all he had left. “I am Star Swirl, of House Galaxy, first son of Stardazzle the second and Crescent Curve. Just a misplaced scholar seeking his fortune in the world. And this…” Star Swirl glanced back and paused to give the stallion room to introduce himself.  

The brown stallion, still distracted, only shrugged.

“This is my traveling companion, Cinquefoil. A Mustangian from the far south.”

The earth pony looked over his shoulder and swirled his ears at the sound of his name, as if turning over the sound of it in them. He gently mouthed the word to himself, then looked out into the distance. He looked almost amused.

Star Swirl continued, “The third of our party, the dear and lovely Heartstrings, waits for us at the foot of Sill, seeking a place for us to sleep. She was quite spent from the long journey here. All of us are. O’er dell and glen and dappled wildwood the three of us have traveled in search of these unique lands.”  

The tattered feathering at Yarak’s fetlocks drifted in the wind. “You sought out the Caulkins?”

“Oh, yes. I am a scholar of unusual fauna and when a fellow traveler brought the unusual weather in this area to my attention, it caught my interest. It was my theory that a location with such a unique biome must surely…”

Star Swirl’s voice faded into the background as he regaled details of the odyssey to Sill. Sunshower was the only pony listening to him. Yarak kept his brass eyes fixed in the unicorn’s direction as he spoke, but looked beyond him at the earth pony.

Cinquefoil blinked back with half-lidded interest. Then he shifted his shoulders turned away to break the stare, moving in quiet languor. He curled his hooves under him and settled upon the cliff to watch the clouded sunset.

The general’s wings tensed. There were archers in his eyes.

Cinquefoil angled his neck towards the clouds. He twitched his nose as a raindrop plopped upon it.

Yarak fixed his whetted gaze on Star Swirl’s.

There was a hiss of rustling bells as the unicorn flinched. “Sir?” The word was not said out of respect, it simply leapt out of his mouth in self defense.

“The earth pony tribe despise the company of unicorns. The Mustangians do not even consort with ponies of the Nation outside of spring. Yet this one drags beside you. Tell me why.”

“A reasonable question, sir. We discovered Cinquefoil in the beginnings of our trek across the Nation. We discovered a snarled wreck in a flat field just at the bleeding edge of the Unicorn Kingdom—a long train of carts awash in flames and smoke, nary a splinter left, t’was a _terrible_  sight—and came upon him wandering in the wreckage.”

Sunshower prowled across the rocks above, watching Star Swirl closely. Her ears were keen on his voice, but every so often the mare’s eye wandered to the earth pony sitting off to the side all by himself.  

 “Sadly, his herd was nowhere to be found. It was the opinion of Heartstrings they all perished or else abducted by the diamond dogs, for they’d surely not leave him out on his own if they could help it. Poor fellow hardly speaks; he’s a touch traumatized, sir. We felt for his situation and our destination was in the heart of the Nation anyway, so we took him along with us in hope of finding another band of nomads he might attach to. In the meantime, he aids in my research.” Star Swirl shrugged with an embarrassed smile. “We’ve become a little attached to each other. Heartstrings practically considers him a nephew.”

General Yarak’s expression was unchanged. “I see.”

Star Swirl glanced towards Sunshower, who now paced from one end of the ledge to another. She sat and stood and sat again before she began another round of pacing.

“We intend to stay,” said Star Swirl, “So long as the research requires. I do not know how long that will be, but I doubt it will be any later than the end of winter. Late spring at the most. We’ll be no trouble at all, I assure you.”

Sunshower shook the water from her coat. She drifted down soundlessly, without even the clink of armor on rock, and approached the ledge where the earth pony sat. A brush of wind sent ripples through his green cloak. At this close distance she could see the odd, angled sprawl of his hind legs. They crossed over each other, tensed at the ankles and bent at the hock, not dissimilar to the way a minotaur sits. His forelegs were tense from holding him up. His expression was calm as he watched the horizon, soft ears angled to follow the wind when it brushed by. The pegasus followed his gaze out beyond the shade of the Caulkins to the green and gold patchwork of fields, scattered with green clots of forest and shiny ovals of water.

 Star Swirl and Yarak’s voices faded into the rain. All Sunshower could hear was the pat of rain bouncing off oilskin and the wet shuffle of mane in the wind. The sound looped around her neck and pulled until Sunshower was two hoofsteps from touching him. She smelled the tang of iron and wood and another uneasy scent she did not recognize at all.

Sensing someone behind him, the stallion angled his head towards her.

The movement snapped the still moment in half and Sunshower returned to herself. “Just what are you doing?” Her voice was softer than she intended. “What is it you are looking at?”

The earth pony called Cinquefoil turned and brought up his eyes to look at her directly. Sunshower flinched and looked away. Her wings banged against the armor, as if trying to fly away without her. She dug her hooves into the rocks against the strange and sudden urge to bolt.

The dark eyes contradicted the rest of him. They were the same make and shape as any other pony’s, but lacked the contentment of a fixated life. It was the wild gaze of an unmarked and impatient foal, ready to remake themselves in an instant, but the thousand-yard stare was too old for a foal’s. When he blinked, the light skipped across them like the sun on water. Bright and fierce and alive, Cinquefoil burned in her belly like liquor.

“Nothing in particular,” he quietly said. “Just the sky and the view.” The wild look was gone as quick as it had come.

“What?”

“You asked what I was looking at. I was looking at the scenery.” Cinquefoil shrugged. “I thought I could find my river, but I can’t tell it apart from any other river. It may be too small to see from here.”

The edge returned to Sunshower’s voice. “What is the matter with your eyes?”

A soft distance away, Yarak pricked his ears and turned his head. Star Swirl paled.

Cinquefoil frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I understand you.”

“What is there to understand? They are… unusual. That is _not_  the gaze of a normal pony.”

The earth pony wrinkled his brow and tilted his head. The expression was infuriatingly innocent.

Sunshower tossed her head, pawing fiercely at the cliff. “Do not attempt to confound me, earth pony! I am young but I have lived in these peaks since foalhood and I have seen earth ponies, so I know. I know what shades a pony’s eyes; there are rocks and moss and songs and memories of other ponies, sparks of a Talent, old dreams lying down and new ones waking up. It is in the farrier’s face, as it is in your unicorn friend’s and in my own. Not in yours. I see nothing but yourself in yours.” She glared at the flat glass of his eye. “What are you, the last of the crystal-eye ponies?”

 The annoying confusion in Cinquefoil’s face grew. “What’s a crystal-eye po—”

Sunshower swung away from him. “You avoid the question.” She shot into the air to round on Star Swirl, who jumped and backed away from her. “Who is he? What is the matter with him? Is he ill? Mad? Both?”

Yarak rumbled low in his throat and scowled. “Daughter.”

At the first word Sunshower froze, wings in mid-flap.

“Be still. Such passion does not befit a member of the pegasus tribe.”

Sunshower sank to the ground. She glared at the earth pony and lashed her tail, a counterargument simmering in her mouth.

 Yarak blinked slowly. “It is of no consequence to you. Be still.”

 Star Swirl cleared his throat again. “It is as I said earlier, Cinquefoil is not an earth pony of the Nation. The Mustangians, the Brumbinos, the Chincoteagal islanders off the mainland, they’re all a different sort of pony, but ponies nonetheless.”

  Cinquefoil himself watched and remained silent, if not a little unsettled.

The general limply inclined a wing. “Regardless, you are here now. I will not disallow you to stay. It is no matter to me what you do, so long as it does not disrupt the rock farmers.” He turned his brass eyes to Sunshower, then to Cinquefoil. His broken feathers curled in the breeze. “The Caulkins can be dangerous shelter for a pony.” For a ghastly moment it seemed as if Yarak was about to smile. “Things are prone to erosion here.”

“We noticed the slick rocks and signs of rockslide on our way up.” Star Swirl kept his tone polite and casual as he nudged Cinquefoil’s shoulder to leave. “Of course, we will have the utmost caution on our way back down. We are grateful for your hospitality, sir.”

“I would expect no less.”

Sunshower watched the newcomer ponies as they became green and blue smudges in the gloam. When she could see no more of them, she turned to Yarak. Her face was frail and wan. “You have not called me your daughter since the day I got my mark.”

The general’s breath clouded in the air. “Oh? I remember calling you that the day after you learned to fly.”

“True, sir. But that incident happened two years before I was marked. Do you not recall?”

Yarak only rumbled in his throat.

“Sir?”

“That display earlier was unseemly. There is a time and there is a place for emotional expression.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Remember to keep yours in check.”

Sunshower wrapped her tail around her shuffling hooves. “I will, sir.”

“Very good.” Yarak popped and stretched his wings and went inside.

 

Hours later, Sunshower found herself at the edge of Sill. She found a gentle curve in the cliff face where the rain would not touch her and put her basket down. The wind brushed against her unarmored coat. The farriers and farmers were in for the night but the wind still carried their signature scent of smoke and metal. Not unlike the wet smell of iron caught in oilskin.

Silhouettes drifted across lit windows at the foot of the mountain. It was impossible to tell one shadow from another. Sunshower wondered how she never realized how many lights were down there, never realized how far away they really were. From far away they looked like embers or stars. Sunshower nosed open the small basket of fruit and roasted mushrooms, long grown cold. She sat still and watched the amber lights as she slowly ate dinner by herself.


	14. The Pony By the Window

“There, now. That wasn’t so terrible, was it?” The farrier lay down her hammer, wiped back her sweaty green mane, and stepped back to check her handiwork.

Heartstrings grimaced at the foreign feel of the silver horseshoe in the space between her hooves and the granite floor. “Fine enough for you to say, wearin’ shoes all the time anyhow.”

“You ought to stay indoors for the next few days. Go gentle and let those soles heal proper. The likes of those bruises are nothing to scoff at.”        

The minstrel looked up at the earth mare and sighed. “Thank you, Topsoil.” Regardless of how much she despised the feel and clang of shoes, it was immensely kind of her to open up her home to them. Kinder still to offer shoes at no charge (just the first set, not the next, and in the Caulkins there _would_  be new sets). “But I still cannae see why they’re needing t’be this fancy.”

Topsoil sniffed. “It’s not a matter of fanciness, it’s a matter of practicality. Silver agrees with unicorns, ‘tis a metal that responds well to magic. You’ll need that here.” She spared a glance at the window, wavy with rain and hazy with dust. “I’m not a pegasus so I can’t truly say what weather magic is like in the Caulkins but I know enough to tell you it’s not working right.”

In the back of the room the farrier’s companion, a white unicorn with a blue and yellow mane, looked up with a wry grin. “Or it just means the pegasi won’t do their jobs.” She leaned back on the bench and took a long sip of stale, watery cider and hiccuped. “I wonder sometimes if their Empire does it on purpose, just to make the earth ponies miserable. Why, in the six months we’ve been here I’ve never seen either of them even try to wrangle those clouds. And before you say it Topsoil, I know they’re but two ponies and there’s only so much they can do, but _honestly_  they could at least try!”

She waved her tin mug at Heartstrings, splashing a few drops of cider. “But they don’t do anything at all, not in the hours decent ponies are awake. Haven’t seen the elder one hardly at all, now that I think on it. You don’t suppose that he died? (Goodness, I hope not. I’d feel a little badly for being so cross.) When the yellow one came in last week for a touch up she didn’t seem to be in mourning, but you can never really tell with—”

“Lightheart, the point still stands. It is not normal weather. Whoever heard of hail in a firestorm? It cannot be laziness alone. Left on its own weather does strange things but it doesn’t do that. Magic’s not right here.” Topsoil turned back to Heartstrings and tapped one of the silver shoes. “The last thing a pony needs is to be iron shod.”

“Oh. Well, alright then. My thanks again for the shoes.” Heartstrings blinked, still unsure why the difference between the metals mattered. She had the feeling the farrier was over-thinking things. Or it was because silver horseshoes needed more replacements. “If you don’t mind, I’ll be taking a moment on the porch and waiting for the lads to show.”

Topsoil nodded and let her go. To Lightheart, but more to herself, she said, “This house is too big. I still don’t know what manner of pony needs two levels and ten rooms, and on such unstable land. What if a rockslide happens? I would never have made us a house like this.”

“Mayhap we could rearrange it. Make it into a tavern or an inn. You’ve already made the stable into a smithy. I’d like for us to have an inn.” Lightheart leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes. “I’m glad you invited the old lowlander. I’ve missed the company of other unicorns. There’s just no real conversation to be had with earth ponies. No offense, dear.”

“None taken.” Topsoil looked at the high, high slate roof. This couldn’t be an inn. _A tavern, perhaps. Taverns are always popular and The Plague Water’s closed now that Wet Wassail’s died._   _There’s an open spot for a new one. But never an inn._  Inns were warm places that welcomed passersby, and the Caulkins had none of those. Ponies got caught in the peaks like trout in a fish trap. Nopony intended to come here and nopony intended to stay, but come and stay they did and set to tasks their marks were never meant for.

Topsoil wondered, not for the first time, if she ought to grab Lightheart and run from this bent grey place before it was too late. But she did not know where else they could go. She watched Lightheart curled up upon the bench. Her white coat had dulled these past months, the brightness of her laughter dimmed. The local ponies did not stare at her here—at least stared less than the bakers of Conemara did—and there was no gossip to bother her. There was not much of anything, really.

Outside, there was the sound of hoofbeats, and the rise and fall of a new voice; male, terse, and exhausted. The farrier shook herself out of her slump and made for the door. _‘Twill be good for the both of us to have company. All this time to ourselves makes a mare think too much._

 The front door creaked on its hinge, letting in the misty drizzle and dank twilight.

The stallion in the sopping oilskin did not walk in so much as he stumble and collapse. He rested on his haunches, breathing hard and shivering.

Heartstrings peeked her head in behind him. “Well, alright, then. Don’t blame ye for wantin’ a roof o’er your head.” With a glow of her horn, she lifted the sopping cloak from his shoulders and onto a peg, exchanging it for a waiting blanket. “You just make yourself comfortable, Cinquefoil. We’ll be in soon.”

The pony called Cinquefoil had a Mustangian’s lean build and long face, and didn’t seem to register the blanket or the fact that he was indoors. The confines of the room did not seem to bother him or had not hit him yet. He might have been too downhearted or exhausted to notice. The poor colt’s neck bent like a broken sunflower stem in the snow. He’d fit right in.

Topsoil grabbed a rag to dry off his mane and went to meet him. He shifted under the blanket—a lift of the hoof or a twitch in his withers or the blink of his flat, dark eyes, Topsoil wasn’t sure—and the mare stopped in her tracks. She flicked her tail and hummed. She’d felt something odd. As if she’d accidentally stumbled into somepony’s funeral and knocked over the casket by accident. A little like how she felt in the ruins last spring or when the wind sometimes blew through the mountains stronger than usual. A little, but not quite. Topsoil shrugged it off.

“Hello there. Cinquefoil, was it?”

He nodded.

“Nice to be out of the rain, isn’t it? I expect you’re worn from that trek up Sill. You’re blessed to get up and down without incident, and in the dark no less.” She ruffled the rag through his sopping mane and over his withers. He squirmed when it ran over his ears. She waited for him to say something: an observation on the house, a complaint that she was being too rough on his ears, a comment on Sill or the weather, but he said nothing.

The water clock in the corner dripped the minutes and Topsoil heard the ripples of every one. It was so quiet she heard the low murmur of voices outside the door. One of them spiked high and fell again. She glanced up a moment to see the blurry outline of a unicorn bobbing up and down like a dinghy on the water.

“Heartstrings said you went to go see the general?”

“Yes.”

“Good idea, that. The sooner you get out of the way, the better. But you know, there was no need to rush. You have easily stayed without his sayso, a few weeks at least. ‘Tis on his word who stays or goes, but to tell you true, I don’t think he cares either way. He doesn’t brood o’er us or hound ponies the way some pegasi do further north. We do our part and give up metals and ores when the Empire comes to collect, but we may as well just be part of the Nation for all Yarak puts in the Caulkins.”

Lightheart snorted. Her eyes were still closed and might have looked peaceful if not for the tartness in her voice. “Brutes an’ bullies, the lot of them. Thinking they’ve a right to goods and done nothing for it. Been known for years t’kill their own children, you know.”

“Dearest...”

“Have you never wondered how rainbows are made?”

Topsoil sighed. “Lightheart, please.”

“Well, it’s true.” The unicorn opened her eyes and swung her mug as though it were a gavel. “I heard it my own self from Firebrand, Tinder Box, councilmare Flash Point _and_  Lady Sundance and whyever would a lady of the Sun Circle lie?”  

Topsoil sighed again and gave Cinquefoil an apologetic glance as she finished drying his mane.

The stallion took the blanket in his teeth and higher on his shoulders. He glanced up at the white unicorn nursing her cider and his eyes widened, then widened further looking between her and Topsoil. He seemed to see them for the first time.

“What?” Lightheart followed Cinquefoil’s gaze. She fiddled with the edges of her skirt, voice guarded and piping.“It isn’t odd at all to keep company with earth ponies. I mean, you yourself travel a pair of unicorns after all a-and anyway, ‘tisn’t even your business to start with.”

The stallion just blinked at that, a bit confused. He swiveled his ears shyly, then looked away.

“I don’t think he meant anything by it, Lightheart.” A spot of déjà vu nipped at Topsoil’s ankles. She looked closely at the stallion again. “Have… we met before? Perhaps your herd went through Conemara a long time ago? Or we passed on the road?”

 “Met?” The stallion shook his head. “No, we’ve never met. You must be thinking of somebody else.” He shuffled again in his strange way and examined the walls around him, taking in the scale of tables, height of the ceiling, and crackling of the hearth.

“Have you ever slept indoors before?” Topsoil gently asked. “A little different from open fields and thickets, isn’t it?”

Cinquefoil’s ears twitched in thought. A nostalgic shadow passed over his face as he began to answer, “Actually, I…” Then he closed his mouth and reconsidered. His pale hooves ran over themselves anxiously as the soft skin around his eyes wrinkled and pinched.

Was he confused by the question? Topsoil flinched guiltily. Maybe he wasn’t actually a nomad or she’d accidentally offended him with her blind assumptions.

“I usually sleep outside”, he said, more to himself than the farrier, the way ponies tell themselves to buy eggs later. “But I’ve done it indoors before. I stayed in a barn once. I liked that.”

“That’s fine to hear.” The last thing she wanted was him throwing into a claustrophobic panic and wrecking the place. “I don’t think you’d care much to sleep out in the rain.”

“Still don’t see why anypony need to give up wares when they don’t even offer fair weather”, Lightheart muttered.

“We can’t use that argument here. There’s no need for efficient weather when nopony here grows food.” Topsoil’s ears sank into her mane and she tried not to remember the beautiful smell of fresh sod or the shine of sun upon feathergrass. “ Nothing grows here.”

“Nonsense!” Lightheart swept an animated hoof towards the window. “What of that green patch ‘round back of the house? Is that not your garden? Who made that? Not a rock farmer. Not I. Not a pegasus. Who’s the one with grass blades upon their flank? A Talent is not packed off that easily.”

“It’s hardly a garden.”

“I know marks and I know Talents and I know they don’t just vanish just because somepony moves away. A diver is a diver even if they live in the desert. Besides, marks are more than the Talents that forge them. ‘Tis the whole of who a pony is, ‘tis their reason to _be_. Why, without one you may as well not be a pony at all!”

Cinquefoil straightened his neck and pricked his ears. There was movement just outside the door. He stood as the door creaked open with hoofbeats and the jingle of bells. As the unicorns entered, he looked to Topsoil. “Excuse me, which room is mine?”

“Everything aside from the first and the last door on the left is unoccupied, take your pick. I make breakfast half past dawn, so prepare to be here then or make your own.”

 “Thank you.” The earth stallion politely dipped his head to the three mares, took up his soggy cloak and went on up the stairs. He brushed by the blue unicorn without a glance.  

Heartstrings watched him until the shadows of the stairwell ate his body. She shared a look with the blue unicorn, who only shrugged.

“Nevermind,” he said. In the firelight, the circles under his eyes made his young face old. “I’m used to it. ‘Twould be wise to bed down early anyhow, we’ve had a long day. I ought to do the same, just a soon as I get a meal in—”

“Star Swirl!”

The unicorn went taut from nose to hoof. His teeth ground together as his eyes bounced about for an escape route.

Lightheart’s mug clinked on the slate as she shot to her feet. “By the beams of the sun, I don’t believe it! However did—where’ve you—” She skittered forward for a better look, bobbing her head up and down like an anxious squirrel as she took him in. The yellow in her mane fuzzed and flared out at her neck from leaning upon the wall for so long. “...Gracious. You look terrible.”

Topsoil lifted her eyebrows and took another look at the haggard stallion. The wet dirt made his bright, noble coat a dull, diluted blue. His tail was a frayed snarl of knots. He was skinny as any common Trottingham wastrel. He’d let his cute, fashionable beard grow to an absurd length, so that the ends of it curled in the hollow of his throat as he breathed. The embroidered silk cape was in tatters, the tiny emeralds sewn into the collar and silver swirls in the hem were long gone. Looking closely, she could see little starburst indents where they used to be.

It was hard to tell if Star Swirl was taller or if he’d simply outgrown his vulture skulk and learned how to carry himself. He still carried his belongings in his mouth, not with magic. That tacky old brass bell was still there, now joined by two more: one cute and silver, the other ratty and iron. His high, ambling gait was the same, if not a bit slower. The long, tapered horn was bare. He was not wearing his moonstone ring.

Lightheart jumped the dining table, swiftly cutting off his stairwell retreat and knocking over a bowl of thistle salad in the process. “Star Swirl, what in the wide, whirling cosmos are you _doing_  here?”

The unicorn rolled his eyes to the ceiling and sighed as if Lightheart asked him to bash his own horn with a sledgehammer.

Topsoil couldn’t help but smile. She’d only seen the fellow a few times before, back when she still played at being Lightheart’s expert gardener, but there was no mistaking that pretentious, world-weary, why-must-you-plague-me-with-your-existence sigh. It was Star Swirl, without a doubt.

“I _was_  about to eat my dinner and go to bed.” He frowned at the pile of oats and thistles scattered at his hooves. “But it appears that plan has changed.”

“What are you doing here?” Lightheart asked again. “Everypony thinks you’re dead! Do you know that? I took a trip all the way from Conemara to east Trottingham to offer my condolences to Twinkleshine! Oh, the poor mare cried into my skirts for hours and wouldn’t let anypony take away the wedding decorations or move the feathergrass cake. She was so worried you’d been abducted by rogue diamond dogs or eaten by the barghest.”

Star Swirl’s ears flattened under every word, until they vanished into his filthy pink mane. The frown calcified into a scowl.

Lightheart glanced down at his cape. “ _Were_  you accosted by diamond dogs? Are you alright? Does Twinkleshine know you still live? Does your mother know? Or your sisters? Starburst and Starbeam were absolutely beside themselves, worse than even Twinkleshine was.”

He softened at the mention of his sisters. When he realized Heartstrings was looking at him, he chose to carefully examine some hairline cracks in the table.

 “Why are you traveling with an old lowlander and an earth pony? Are you hurt? Where is your engagement ring? Star Swirl, what happened to you?”

Star Swirl sighed again, this time sounding more spent. “Listen, Brightspark.”

“Lightheart.”

“I have walked half the length of the Caulkins, up Mount Sill and down it again. I am wet, I am exhausted, and I have not eaten since sunrise. My day has been long enough. I will not do this now.” He sniffed at her breath. A callous thought lurked behind his eyes, but he kept it to himself.

“If not now, when?”

 “Later.”

Lightheart twisted her lips into a hard little line. "Later, then." She said nothing else as Star Swirl pulled himself up the stairs but kept a tight grip on him with hard, bright eyes.

"Hm. We actually got more than two words out of him." Topsoil went to work cleaning the dirty dishes. Her laughter was younger than her face. "I wonder when he got so genteel."

 

* * *

 

Sleeping in a bed was strange. For months he’d slept in a high cradle of branches or scratchy mattresses of grass and dirt with his cloak as a blanket. Before that, there was a simple nest of quilts and pillows in the southeast corner of the library where the walls were heavily insulated against the elements and the roof never leaked, next to the tall window and hidden from sight behind bookcases. It was cozy and he’d always considered that a proper bed, and it was still nothing like this.

Why did it need a metal frame and why was it so high off the ground? Why were there curtains around it? What if there was an emergency in the middle of the night? You’d likely get tangled up in the curtains and waste precious time just trying to get out of bed. The mattress was too soft and felt like it was trying to swallow him up. The first night Cinquefoil did not know how to position himself—was he supposed to curl up or lay out flat on his back or on the side?— and fluffing pillows and wrapping himself in the quilt was harder than it looked.

In the end, he took his quilt and pillow and curled up on the floor instead. It was much better there. He’d been walking for a very long time and could use sleep. He was quite tired. The ache of his legs was the least of it.

Down there he heard every lull, groan, and creak of the floorboards, felt the soft jostle of hooves in the hallway or the other rooms and the rough rumble of hooves as they rushed down the stairs. For a long time, he studied the intricate whorls in the woodwork, the subtle chaos of the pockmarked ceiling. Every now and again, the gentle smell of apples or the simmering smithy smoke wafted through the walls. The hissing chatter of rainfall on the roof drowned out troubling thoughts.

Sometimes he slept. Sometimes he did not.

Sometimes, in the hours when he did not sleep, Cinquefoil looked out the window. It took up about a third of the wall, wide and round like a porthole and framed with hard, riveted steel that didn’t match the rest of the building. The latch rusted over years ago and squealed at him when the window swiveled open. (Of course, it was always raining in the Caulkins, so there was no need to open the window anyway.) Cinquefoil didn’t want to get wet, so he kept it closed as he watched.

He watched the rock farmers trailing off toward the sharp curved mountains in the morning and watched them slog back just before sunset. He watched the jackdaws fight each other in the trees. He watched the comings and goings of Topsoil and Star Swirl and all the ponies that arrived with bad shoes and went away with newer, better ones. The pale blue curtain had horseshoes sewn along the hem and it hid the grey and orange light of the sun whenever he wanted. (It was hard to sleep with the sun shining in his eyes.)

Sometimes, around midday, the swirling grey drained from the sky and all the clouds turned white as he felt the stone roof bend in. Felt the floorboards rumble, the walls tremble. Cinquefoil soon learned to keep the curtain closed at midday.

There were days the curtain never opened, even when the sky was grey or orange or blue and not white at all.

Sometimes Cinquefoil slept. Sometimes he did not.

He knew the comings and the goings of the days by the meals Heartstrings left by the table. On Tuesday evenings she brought dandelion treacle and on Saturday mornings there was oatmeal with honey in it. The daylight hours were full of the clang of hammer against anvil. The dark hours began in waves of chatter amongst ponies he did not know coming up from the floorboards. Then they went away, hooves creaked down the hallway and the house grew quiet.

Rarely, in these quiet hours Cinquefoil would nudge his door open and go down the stairs. He sat upon the bench in the dark, listened to the clatter of hail or rain or dust or whatever weather it was outside that night, and sipped some lemon cordial. Then he’d go back up to the room and curl into his quilt. Once, Topsoil found him down there and they scared the living daylight out of each other. But that only happened once.

Some days Cinquefoil did not sleep at all. Other days, he spent sundown to sundown asleep.

And sometimes his sleep was flat, empty, and peaceful.

More often it was not.

He kept a rag near the vase of marigolds for the cold sweats. In the early mornings he felt the shadow of thorns digging into his flesh and reminded himself that the sounds outside were only Topsoil. No towers screamed. Nothing was falling. The sound of metal on metal was only Topsoil the farrier and Cinquefoil was safe, watching from the window of her house.

Some mornings, if he was already awake (or had never gone to sleep), Heartstrings stayed after she brought breakfast and played her lyre for him. She played outside every day for the earth ponies waiting on their horseshoes and played downstairs in the early evenings when they drank their bad cider and warm cordial. This second group was new and still in small numbers and they were not always kind. They complained of Heartstrings’ song choices and did not like jigs, reels, shanties, waltzes, or hornpipes. The ponies of Caulkin only wanted ballads, not of great deeds or great ponies, but ballads about places. City anthems and ten verse dedications to some old, beautiful street.

At least, that’s what he was told. Cinquefoil did not go downstairs when the lights were on, so he did not know for certain. But there was no reason to doubt Heartstrings. She could light her horn and Cinquefoil could look directly at her without heavy breathing or his heart banging in his tight chest.

She played music for him every morning, sometimes for just a few minutes and sometimes for hours. Some with lyrics and some without lyrics. He preferred the ones without lyrics, because some days when Heartstrings played she looked at him as if waiting for him to sing along. He did not know the words, so he did not know how. Yet she looked at him as if he ought to.

Heartstrings tried to start conversations and at first Cinquefoil did his best to hold them with her. But he couldn’t grip the words properly and they slipped out of his hooves and rolled away from him and he found himself with nothing to say. The few words he managed to find were small, pale, and pointless and usually left him awkward or confused. So instead Heartstrings would do enough talking for the both of them. She told him what was happening below his hooves and the names of the regular patrons and neighbors, she mused about the odd weather, if Lightheart had managed to catch Star Swirl yet and all lengths the stargazer went to avoid speaking to her. She told him about dead ponies she knew in foalhood and the misadventures of all the sweet harts she lived with in the Wildwood.

Cinquefoil recalled a time when he’d been quite surprised that harts knew how to talk. He must have been very young when that happened, for it was common knowledge that deerfolk could spoke clear and clean as anypony. He wondered why such a stale memory came back to him now. He wondered why it nagged at him long after Heartstrings left.

He looked forward to her visits.

It was lonely sometimes in this cozy little room.

Star Swirl visited him sometimes as well, though not nearly as often. Thankfully. In the first few days of living in Topsoil’s house (perhaps a week? the collection of days seemed at least a week), he would knock upon Cinquefoil’s door and wait. When the door did not open he’d try to speak to him a few times, eventually give up and let him alone.

In the second week living in Topsoil’s house, Star Swirl would knock upon his door, wait a few minutes, and eventually come into the room. He’d tiptoe in so as not to alarm Cinquefoil, just in case he was sleeping. The unicorn never looked him in the eye. He’d glance about the room, looking at the vase of marigolds or the whorls in the floor as he talked to him about the Caulkin Mountains. The arrangement and topography of Sill and the other four peaks. Potential hiding places. If he’d noticed General Yarak or his daughter was watching him that day. (He spoke of the mountains nearly as often as Heartstrings played music, though Cinquefoil was sure mountains had nothing to do with Star Swirl’s Talent.)

Then, three weeks after living in Topsoil’s house, something changed.

Star Swirl stopped dithering and he stopped avoiding his eye. He watched Cinquefoil very closely. He’d wait for Cinquefoil to speak first instead of telling him about the mountain. His eyes took a strange, steadfast shine and hard lines of frustration forked at his mouth. Star Swirl wanted something and he stared at the back of Cinquefoil’s head as if Cinquefoil ought to know what he wanted.

But he had nothing to give. All he owned in the world was an oversized oilskin cloak and half a bowl of oatmeal, but he didn’t think that was what Star Swirl was after. The whole affair unnerved him.  

“This is not like you,” Star Swirl told him one evening.

 Cinquefoil lifted his head from his little nest of quilt in the corner and blinked at him, twitching his long brown ears. What a strange thing to say. What else could Cinquefoil possibly be besides himself? 

Star Swirl seemed determined not to leave until Cinquefoil responded. So he said, “You’ve not known me all that long. How do you know what I’m like?”

“Perhaps. But I’ve at least known you long enough to know when something is wrong.”

“Nothing is wrong.”

“Is it that you’re frightened of the White Roc? Or Yarak?”

“No.”

“You’ve been sleeping a lot. Are you feeling ill? Is your body hurting you? You seemed to be getting used to it, but...” He ran his tongue over his muzzle nervously, then took a step towards him. “I will get your old one back, you know. I do not go back on my word. I...I’ve not found anything on Sill or the other mountains yet, I’m afraid. ‘Tis slow going, especially in this wretched weather and the general’s eye on me. I must be careful of it. But I gave you my word, Cinquefoil. I will keep it.”

The earth pony lowered his ears and pulled his legs close to himself. He wished he’d been more attentive instead of looking out the window. Then he’d have felt the light hoofbeats against the floor, he’d have heard the bells jingling before they got to the door and he could have pretended to sleep when the stargazer came in.

Star Swirl made him very nervous, almost as nervous as the long, white clouds that came in the morning, and he did not know why. In the first few days Cinquefoil started staying in this room, Star Swirl made Cinquefoil irritated, bitter, and hurt. (Right now, he wasn’t sure why that was, either.)

“I will,” Star Swirl repeated.

Something in his determined eyes, the jingle of his cape, the stir of his bright beard in the stale air made Cinquefoil’s mouth go dry. A blurred, half-dead memory roused and stormed between his ears. He stared at the long horn thrusting from the soft, pink puddle of hair, sharp at the end and unlit. Cinquefoil’s ears could not be seen through the thick black curl of his mane. His comfortable room was suddenly very small.  

“And I believe you.” He’d have proclaimed Star Swirl his mother if it would just get the unicorn out of his room. “You’re looking very hard, I can tell.”

Star Swirl tilted his head and took a step forward. Cinquefoil pressed against the wall.  

“What?” Alarmed, the unicorn looked about the room, behind him, and out the door. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“But—”

“Nothing is wrong. I just want to be let alone for a little while and don’t feel like talking to anypony.”

“Oh. Well, uh. Alright then.” He stopped at the doorway and looked back at him. “Are you quite sure you’re alright? Your new bones aren’t hurting you or anything of that sort?”

“No. No, I’m fine.”

Star Swirl thought for a moment, then asked, “Are you angry with me?”

“No.”

“Because you’ve all the right to. I know that I—”

“I am not angry with you, Star Swirl.”

“Are—”

“I’m sure.”

“Well, alright then. Good evening, Cinquefoil.”

“Good evening, Star Swirl.”

He waited until the latch clicked and he did not hear the stargazer’s hooves upon the floorboards. Then Cinquefoil bolted the door shut.

 

* * *

 

“Hey. Are ye feelin’ alright, lad?”

A lantern flickered next to the vase of marigolds. It was morning, but all that said so was the clock and the cockerel. Thick clouds and a raging dust storm hoarded the sun and made the day a steady, brown eventine.

Cinquefoil glanced up in surprise, his cheeks round with a chunk of hard cheese. “Yes, I’m alright.” Why did everypony keep asking him that? It was starting to become irritating. Before Heartstrings finished opening her mouth, he added, “And yes, I am sure.” He ate a bit of bread and smiled at her to prove it.

Heartstrings' tail swished and curled along the floor like trails of white smoke in stormy skies.“It’s just that it’s November, as of three days ago.”

“Is there something the matter with November?”

“We’ve been here for a month, now. More to the point, _you’ve_  been up here in this room for a month. This room and nowhere else.”

When Cinquefoil just ate his breakfast and did not respond, Heartstrings took up her lyre. She gave it some short, light plucks and dove into a rollocking song that was too bright for the room and too bright for her mood. Her voice lilted light and casual. Forcefully so. “‘Not very much space up here. ‘Tis but ten full steps from one wall to the other and that’s all.”

“Twelve, actually. Fourteen if it’s corner to corner.”

“Don’t ye feel cramped up here all on your own? Don’t ye be gettin’ bored at all? Cannae be much t’do in just these four walls. Do ye never get lonely?”

“I suppose sometimes. But you still visit me plenty,” said Cinquefoil. He shrugged. “I feel the way the way I always feel.”

“And what way’s that?”

“Not like much at all. Not good, not bad. I feel okay.”

Heartstrings’ golden eyes flicked up from her lyre. The glow of her horn sent shadows running down her face, curved and delicate and sharp as the edge of an ax. The little shadows burrowed in the little lines under her eyes and the new wrinkles forming at her jawline. She wagged her head as she hummed the words of the song to herself. She did not believe him.

He flicked his tail a couple of times, then sighed in defeat. “Tired. I’ve just felt… tired.”

Cinquefoil put his chin on the windowsill. Watched orange dots trail into the clawline mountains as the miners went to work, watched yellow dots stay where they were as the rock farmers stayed home. Heard the scratch of dust and the angry pat of raindrops. The curtains fluttered over his withers and ears, waving in a steady ebb and flow like ripples in a quiet river.

He used to live by a river, once. It was a good river, smooth and strong, full of trout and ducklings and there was sunshine. It was a better place than here. But he’d decided to come here instead. What pony in their right mind would decide to live in these rainy mountains and not by the river? It made no sense at all.

“I often feel very tired. That is why I sleep so much.”

The room had horrible acoustics. The notes fell limp against the wallpaper, sank into the floorboards like a smell that never goes away, made pretty music dry and static.

Cinquefoil twitched his ears. _Static._  

Static was a thing you heard, a thing you saw. Fuzzy and abrasive, like clumps of steel wool. He remembered lots of from when he was very small, though he wasn’t sure where the static came from—something small, square and black?—sitting on a very high roof with his mother. She’d listened with him, but paced back and forth instead of sitting, scowling fiercely at the little black box. His mother must have disapproved of static.

Heartstrings’ voice whispered from beyond the curtain. “We’ve heard you, you know.”

Cinquefoil pricked his ears and turned around to look at her.

“At night. When you scream.”

He blinked. “I do?”

“Aye. You do.”

“Oh. ...I didn’t realize I did that. I can try not to do it anymore, if you want.”

Heartstrings ran her tongue along the edge of her teeth, dipped her ears, traced the wood grain with her left hoof. She tried and failed to say several things. Finally, she gave up on whatever she fought to say and asked instead, “What is it that you dream of?”

“I don’t remember them after I wake up,” Cinquefoil lied. He shifted about, itchy in his own coat and skin. There was no need to talk about this. It was with him enough as it was. There had to be something else he could talk about. “I like the song you’re playing. What’s it called?”

Heartstrings hit a sour note as her head jerked up. Her eyes watched his and then her eyes grew wide and wider still.

“Does it have lyrics? What is it about?”

“A...an apple tree. ‘Tis a song about an apple tree. You know, ‘Don’t sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me’? About a lass waiting for her lover t’come back from a war.” The ease dropped out of her voice. “You taught it to me. You taught it to me the night that I met you.” Her voice fought to steady itself, but fear cracked it like bad radio interference.  

_Like static._  Cinquefoil twitched his nose and blinked long and hard.

_That’s right, static comes from a radio._

And the radio ran on old batteries and the radio came from his mother’s father. And his mother was angry because they were the last batteries they had and couldn’t get anything but static. When the static died with the batteries she kicked the radio off the roof and it bounced against the bricks and awnings before it smashed against the sidewalk. His mother was tall and her skin shone with darkness, her teeth bright and sharp. Human teeth.

“Yes. Yes, I sang it to you when I combed out all those tangles in your tail. I picked out at least seven pinecones and used my hands to do it. It took hours.”

The stallion’s face pinched as he stared at Heartstrings in the dim lantern light, then the dusky window behind him and the bed pristinely made because it was unslept in. He recalled that sleeping on the floor was good for his long, straight back that now bent a different way with different bones. And Cinquefoil recalled that his name was not Cinquefoil. He swallowed hard.

Heartstrings’ mane ticked his withers. Her face was too grim for her face, made her look like somepony else, somepony much older who never laughed. “I want you to tell me why we are here. Why did we come to the Caulkins?”

“Humans.” He closed the curtains and stepped away from the window. The dust storm raged and the world was dark, but the sky paled above it. “We’re here to confront General Yarak and find the other humans. If there are any.”

“Oh, there are.”

“You don’t know that for certain, Heartstrings.”

“There are,” she said again. “And I do. There are things one knows and things one _knows_. And this is a thing that I know, the same way I knew that you were not a myth.”

The little stallion smirked. “You had myths of a skinny human that raised pigeons, hated dogs, and sang badly?”

“Nopony likes a wiseacre, you know what I mean. I knew your folk were real, even when Megan or someone like her did not appear on the heel of a rainbow, even in the thick smoke of griffon fires. Even when I realized that if ponies were t’be saved they’d have to save their own selves, I still knew.” She shrugged with a little smile. “I’m a wee bit foalish that way, I suppose.”

Cinquefoil blinked at her, unsure of how he ought to respond.

“‘Tis but only one Megan and she’s surely long gone. Only one Dream Valley and one San Francisco, and the both of them are gone, too. They will be missed. Nopony will force ye t’do anything ye don’t want to do—don’t think it’s even possible for humans—so rest if you’re still tired.” Her little silver horseshoe clicked against Cinquefoil’s forehoof. “But heed me, lad: know that what is gone is gone. You are not. I am not. Not yet. And I’m not wantin’ you to go anyplace yet, I’ve know you too short a time to start missin’ you.”

“Has Star Swirl found anything yet?”

“Well, he sure found a pound of trouble in Lightheart’s remembering him.” Heartstrings laughed and became herself again. “Also found a few of those hubcap things and a couple other strange objects he’s no name for. But no, nothing of use yet. He’s starting to become frustrated. And I think he misses you, though he tries not to show it.” She glanced towards the door. “I don’t think he has many friends.”

“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me.” Cinquefoil nosed the curtain open. The dust was settling down and if he looked very closely he could make out a white circle of sun in the clouds. Something bright yellow zipped through the steady rain, banking east. “Do you have to start working soon?”

“Aye, in a few minutes.” Heartstrings wrinkled her nose and snorted. “Hardtack’s coming for a touch up today and that lout always wants that bawdy song about the seapony.”

“Are you sure you can’t stay a bit longer?”

“No, I’m running late as is. But y’know I’m working out in the back, just below your hooves and to the right. It may be easier, I think, for you to come down instead.”

“You really don’t give up, do you?”

If he didn’t know better, Cinquefoil might have called Heartstrings smug. “And Topsoil’s crafted a fine set of shoes.”

The brown pony sighed. “I’ll consider it.”

“Good.”

Cinquefoil didn’t watch her leave. He pushed his shoulder against the window until it squealed open and let the rain sink into his coat. A strong breeze sent the marigold’s swirling in their vase. As he watched them twirl, the pony whispered under his breath. A clipped, one-syllable word hissed over and over and over. He could not forget it again.

 

* * *

 

Sunshower alighted upon one of the high stacks of crates. Her unshod hooves tip-tap-tapped upon the wood as her green tail swished in the bellows of smoke. “A unicorn came by early this morning. Before the sun came up.”

Topsoil’s eye flicked up and back down to her work through a mask of soot. The hammer wedged between her teeth muffled her words. “Yes, and this means what to me?”

Were Sunshower an unseemly mare, she might have smiled at that. As earth ponies went, Topsoil was remarkably keen, surprisingly rational, and at times she possessed something like wit. It was almost like speaking to a pegasus. Not for the first time, Sunshower wondered if Topsoil’s blood mingled with another tribe’s. It would certainly explain the mare’s unusual taste in lovers. And besides all that, Topsoil knew how to keep wingblades sharp and shoes flightworthy and was thus the mare to know. “I have come into the possession of news pertaining to those of the Unicorn Kingdom and you are the only earth pony I know in the Caulkins that associates with ponies of the unicorn tribe.”

“I’m the only earth pony you know at all.”

“Untrue. You are the only one worth talking to, there is a difference. Regardless, where is the flippant white unicorn that shares your bed?”

Topsoil reared back, braced her jaw, and slammed the hammer down. “I expect Lightheart’s lurking somewhere around here. She aims to pounce upon Star Swirl before he slips into the thick of the mountains. Heartstrings is still sleeping, I think.”

Sunshower rubbed her tongue along the edge of her teeth. She knew that name. “Do you mean the lanky scholar who does not shave and dresses in a raggedy, belled cape?” The past month he’d been seen skulking along the crevice of the Caulkins, poking his nose in places and annoying the miners. “What business does he have here? Is he in perpetual loss of shoes? Is he a lush?”

“Tenant.”

“In the company of two other ponies?”

“Yes. In an hour or so Heartstrings will be down to play. You could wait and tell her then, if you like.”

Sunshower peered around the corner and upwards at the house face. Pale blue curtains fluttered in a circular window with a steel frame.

“Not surprised you’re surprised. Between the Mustangian and Star Swirl’s sneaking about you’d hardly know any other ponies lived here at all.” Topsoil rested her hammer and lay back to rub the soot from her cheeks. “May as well be housing ghosts. Ghosts that eat up our food and scare ponies out of their skin all hours of the night.”

The curtains fluttered and Sunshower caught a brown blur between them. She’d flown past that window but ten minutes ago. The pegasus’ wings fiddled at her sides. She wished that she’d worn her helmet and wondered if she ought to get her blades back and tell Topsoil to hone them another day.

Here. A month scouring the Caulkins peek to pit, delving in canyons and concaves and all the time he lounged a few feet above her head as Sunshower waited on horseshoes and made clipped conversation. The entire time he was right here. _Conniving little courser._

The pegasus narrowed her eyes. “Tell me what he does.”

“Who? Star Swirl?”

“The Mustangian.”

“You know as well as I. Save once, I never see him out of his room, though he surely comes out.” Topsoil shrugged her shoulders. “He’s not there when Lightheart cleans the room, not that there’s much to clean. Keeps the bed quite tidy. Of late he’s taken to walks in the afternoon and at night, when most of us are working or asleep. I only know because I saw his shadow wavering on the wall as he put the lantern back. Odd colt’s a perfect tenant, if not a little…” She rubbed the back of her head in thought.

“A little what? Suspicious? Unnerving? Murderous? Speak mare, speak!”

“I was going to say quiet. Although, now that you mention it his face is a bit unnerving at times. Very tense. I think the cramped room is finally wearing him down. His sort aren’t accustomed to walls.”

 The muddy wind splattered Sunshower’s mane across her face, getting hair and grit in her mouth. When she looked at the window again the curtain was still and the brown figure was gone. “You called him odd. Why?”

“For one, he’s no clue how seasons work. He overheard us comparing how unicorns and the earth ponies go about Summer Surcease and had no idea what we were talking about. And the night before last he fell out of a tree.”

“Sunshower twitched her tail and made a scoff that was almost a laugh. “Speak sense.”

“I am. That’s just what happened, he fell right on out of that hackberry o’er yonder. Colt’s lucky he didn’t snap his legs.”

Sunshower looked across the rocks to a wide limbed tree tipped to the side, missing branches all along its left half, a carpet twigs and dead leaves scatted around the trunk. It looked lightning struck. It was not a short tree either. “How does that even _happen_?”

“He told me that he climbed up.”

“Ponies do not climb.” Earth ponies were said to be dim, but surely they were not _that_  dim. And while Cinquefoil was many things, dim was not one of them. Perhaps he was mad.

“Guess nopony told him that. He was surprised to find himself on the ground, _that’s_  the strange part. The way he looked at that hackberry it was like he expected to scale his way to the top, like a squirrel or a monkey. When I asked him about it, he told me that it seemed a hardier tree.”

A hornless silhouette hovered at the little window inside the door that led to the smithy. Sunshower pricked her ears. It was too early for anypony to visit the tavern. The front door was still locked.

Topsoil nosed through the rest of her tools, eventually pulling out a long pair of tongs. “Had a blanket with him too. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he aimed to sleep in it.”

Behind smoked glass, the earth pony shifted his shoulders and moved away. Sunshower heard hooves on the floorboards.

Lightheart peeked around the corner of the front entrance and rushed across the floor in a rustle of skirts. She crouched under one of the larger tables, pinching the edge of her calico skirt with her magic so that it wouldn’t rub against the dingy stone. The unicorn met Sunshower’s eye and put a hoof to her lips for silence. The tavern door creaked open and Lightheart grinned at the sound of bells.

Topsoil went on at the edge of Sunshower’s attention. “…understand his situation…need to start charging…over a month, that seems a fair time to wait. …Must be something he’s skilled at…can do around here. That seems fair, doesn’t it Sunshower?”

The pegasus blinked back at her at the sound of her name. She plucked the most logical response and tossed it over her shoulder like an old apple core. “Yes, that does sound reasonable.”

A blue muzzle poked out of the doorway and sniffed. Star Swirl risked a tentative step outside, then another. When nopony sprang at him, he exhaled and wished Topsoil good morning. He paused a moment when he saw Sunshower, then inclined his head politely and hustled across the smithy, holding himself like a misbehaved hound all the while.

He was halfway there when a white hoof pressed upon his tail and Lightheart’s fishhook voice dug into his shoulders.

“It’s later,” she said.

 Star Swirl stretched his neck backwards and made an ugly face when he discovered how far he was from the door.

“We’re going to talk about this whether you want to or not, Star Swirl.”

It took several tugs for Star Swirl to get his tail out from under Lightheart’s hoof. He tossed his overgrown mane and sniffed, “There is nothing to talk about.”

“Allow me to disagree, but there seems to be plenty said of letting my cousin linger at the altar.” Lightheart angled her ears and pressed her lips together. “I mean, if it was just a matter of cold hooves, that is still no reason to—”

“I did _not_  have cold hooves. I simply had no interest in Miss Twinkleshine, not then and not ever. That is all there is to it.” Star Swirl gnashed his teeth in frustration and kicked a bit of coal across the floor. “And I do not have time to reminisce of things that have already passed and can do nothing about.”

Lightheart prepared to fire off a counter argument when she glanced at the bulging saddlebags at Star Swirl’s sides. Sunshower could see the drive to needle Star Swirl further into conversation at odds with the question burning at the tip of her tongue. “What _are_  you doing in the mountains anyway?”

“Research.” The stargazer swished his tail protectively around his ankles. “Of the local fauna and geology of the Caulkins.” He looked at Sunshower as he said it, though he tried not to.

Sunshower smirked. The stargazer had to do better than that to pull one over on her. He was the Mustangian’s accomplice and that alone made him suspicious, even without his constant sneaking in the summit cracks.

Something bumped the back of Sunshower’s hock and she spared a glance behind. A familiar set of pale hooves brightly contrasted the sooty floor. The pegasus sprang back in a flurry of wings and legs, knocking over a can of nails in the process. The clatter and commotion thankfully hid the undisciplined noise she made.

Cinquefoil watched the unicorns as he leaned against a support beam, his posture deceptively easy. He must have crept in under the cover of the unicorns’ noise, his coat blending into the easy browns and blacks of the smithy. He did not wear his green oilskin and at first Sunshower didn’t recognize him, but there was no mistaking the gaunt face or waterfire eyes. He was so close she could see the arteries twitch in his tightening neck.

Sunshower crouched beside the kiln, unarmed wings splayed at her sides, the edge of her feathers glinting orange in the light. It was a hideously embarrassing stance, bladeless and practically armorless at ground level, staring out at the world like some simple line-eyed goat.

He turned and twitched his long ears at her. “Oh, it’s you. Hello again.” When Sunshower did not respond, he mused, “I didn’t think the pegasus ponies dipped this low.”

“I am here on business. And to authorize the adjustment and sharpening of wingblades.” Sunshower shook off her alarm the way cats shake off bathwater. “Not that it is any business of yours.”

Cinquefoil shrugged. He shrugged and just stood there with his hooves staked into the dirt like foreigner flagpoles. There was nothing abnormal in the way he stood or bent his neck or twitched his tail. The build of his bones was unremarkable and the curve of his back was standard. And yet...

Star Swirl caught the Mustangian’s eye. Cinquefoil nodded to him politely and turned away, pretending to suddenly have an interest in how Topsoil’s furnace worked. His muscles tightened as if to run.

Then Sunshower saw it. His flanks were bare, nothing on them but dirt and fur.

She narrowed her eyes. What sort of full grown pony had no mark? Was it another result of his wild heritage? Yarak told her once of Arabians, elegantly boned and impossibly tall; they had no marks either. But Cinquefoil was too small to be even half of their kind. Could he be hiding it somehow? The only other explanation was that the stallion was talentless and Sunshower didn’t entertain that notion for a second.  

And she still couldn’t look him in the eye.

“Didn’t you have news?”

Sunshower angled an ear in Topsoil’s direction. She didn’t dare move her eye away from the Mustangian, lest he vanish again. “What was that?”

“You said you wanted to speak to the unicorns of news.”

“A herald bearing the Kingdom’s colors came by this morning.” She flitted an eye over the unicorns and back to the quiet earth pony. “Your king is dead.”

Perhaps the unicorns dropped their quarrel when they heard the news. Perhaps they gaped in shock. Perhaps they cried. Perhaps they said something else to her. Sunshower did not know and she did not care. It was not her kingdom and not her business. He was looking at her again.

Cinquefoil’s silent stare rang in her ears. Sunshower’s primary feathers twitched as if under a soggy updraft.

How dare he. How dare he have audacity to stare at her with those bizarre, infuriating eyes of his, as if he were completely ignorant of it all. As if he were an ordinary stallion rolling rocks down a canyon. How dare his silence be so damn loud and how dare an earth pony—a common dirt-pushing _earth pony_ —disconcert her in this way? He wasn’t even ugly like he was supposed to be. If she split his skull with her back hoof it would serve him right.

Sunshower’s heart sank when he went back inside.

She wondered if the round window with blue curtains was his. She wondered if he pulled the curtains back and watched the world, his face gentle and quiet and charged as the breeze before a storm. He’d had circles around his eyes. She wondered if he slept poorly. It was unhealthy and unwise to neglect sleep. Cinquefoil was tense around frail, lank-legged Star Swirl, yet did not fear her father at all. Everypony with sense was frightened of Yarak.

Nothing made sense about that accursed pony and Sunshower wished he would come back outside.

“Sunshower?” Lightheart’s big blue eyes and frilly bonnet peered at her.

“What is it?”

“Are you alright?” The unicorn was alone. Topsoil’s whetstone screeched against wingblades at the far end of the smithy. Star Swirl had stolen away while Lightheart wasn’t looking.

“I am perfectly alright.”

“If you say so…”

“I do say so.”

“Sunshower, did… did the herald say anything else to you? Anything at all? Do you know how King Mohs passed?” Lightheart’s eyes were large and wavering.

Sunshower took a step back from her. She was unused to emotions laying themselves out in plain sight where everypony could see them and did not know the correct way to respond.

“No, the herald did not say. However, it is my presumption that he died of being old. He was your king for a long time and rulers do not last forever. Nothing does, except for the sky.” Sunshower thought a moment. If the loss of Lightheart’s king inspired such a response, then it would be polite to offer consolation. “Do not worry, I am sure that your new monarch will be quite sufficient.”

“Do you know who it is?”

“Somepony called Argentum.”

Sunshower glanced behind her. Her wings felt the wind slacken and recline. The day dimmed and brightened all at once and the rain fell in fat drops that never touched. The support beams groaned as Topsoil’s house leaned to the left. The Roc was going out.

It pulled up its claws and lifted from Sill every few days now, instead of every few years. The White Roc often returned late, tapping its claws against the mountainside when it ought to be resting. It was out of sorts. Or Yarak was out of sorts. It was the same thing, really.

Lightheart cringed, pulling her shawl tight around her shoulders.

Sunshower tilted her head, perplexed. “I don’t see why you cower so. It is only the Roc. It feeds on water vapor and nimbus clouds, with an occasional elephant in the summer. It does not eat ponies and could not care less about you.” The beams leaned and snapped back into their natural position. “I expect that it fidgets because it overslept. I am that way sometimes; my wings are anxious and want to make up for all the time that I did not spend productively.”

The pegasus tapped her hooves on the dirt floor and tossed her short little tail about. “Topsoil said that in the Kingdom your job was to interpret marks. Do you know what it means when a pony has no mark at all?”

“Depends on the pony.” The unicorn gave her a sidelong glance and sucked her teeth. “But experience tells me that the pony is not lacking in Talent, just the discovery of one. Talents are always there, a mark are just the culmination.”  

“Have you encountered a pony that was full grown and still without one?”

“ _Oh_.” Lightheart’s ears shot into the air and flicked as if somepony called her name. Her eyes glittered and a tiny, ladylike grin teased at her muzzle. “You mean Cinquefoil.”

Topsoil’s voice rose from the back. “Lightheart, be nice.”

“I _am_  being nice.” The unicorn twirled the tip of  her tail in a way that was almost too careless. “T’was but an innocent question.”

Sunshower kept her face and ears neutral. “I said nothing of the sort.”

“I’m not blind. And I’m not dim either, despite the opinions of certain bearded bachelors.” The little grin was back on Lightheart’s face. It had teeth this time. “I could talk to him if you like.”

“That will _not_  be necessary.” Sunshower tapped her hoof and snorted. “Wealth of Welkin, all I had was a simple question. I did not put in a request for vulgar implications.”

“Who’s implying? You see a mare staring after another pony like that, there’s a fair chance she’s interested one way or another.” The yellow strands in her tail curled over her flank in little scimitar crescents. “But I never said how.”

“The stallion is suspicious and thus I am keeping an eye on him. He is a strange pony and he is up to something and his eyes are creepy and he stares all the time and it is strange and I do not like him. It would not surprise me in the least to discover he was a red-hooved brigand on the run from justice.”

“If you say so.”

“And I do say so.”

“In any case, he’s still young yet. Perhaps nomadic ponies do not lock into Talent the way town fairing folk do. I’ve not met any before now, so I wouldn’t know.” Lightheart shrugged. “When the day comes he’s six and two score years and still bare flanked, then come find me and bring the record book with you.”

Sunshower sighed. “It is not only the mark. As I told you, he is a peculiar pony. And I am not the only one that thinks so. Topsoil called him odd as well. Said he was climbing trees.” The pegasus rolled her shoulders and leaned her back against the wall. “I cannot unriddle him.”

The unicorn laughed at that. “What mare can? Don’t you know? He’s a stallion and all stallions are strange, a fair number of them mad, besides.” She waved her tail again. “Glad I’ve never had a taste for them.”


	15. Dry Seeds in a High Wind I

The rain was light and the wind was high. Good weather for wings. The little ponies of the Caulkins, the rock farmers and the miners, the masons and smiths, and all their sons and daughters, all went to work on time and put their ores in order. They knew autumn was winding down into winter. Next month the representatives of the Pegasus Empire would be along to collect their due. A healthy stack of crates climbed up the back of houses and spread themselves around the mountains’ feet like wooden garlands.

So when a trio of pegasi bearing the mark of the Empire breached the horizon, their new armor glinting grey in the sun, everypony took notice. A soft, rankled burble of fret ran from house to house, crawling all the way into the high mountain caves.

Sunshower found her father at the tip of Sill, the same place he could always be found when the wind was high. Yarak’s tattered ears gently twitched as they angled themselves towards the eager gale. His face was set in a peculiar, almost tender sort of way. His eyes were not watching the pegasi, but the proud object trailing behind their wagon: a black banner emblazoned with blue wings, the feathers raised high in a scimitar curve. Long orange tassels at the tip flared like sheets of fire.

General Yarak squinted his rheumy eyes to see better. His right wing twitched limply at his side, rising and descending like a hound that could not find a place to sleep. The stringy feathering at his fetlocks kept getting caught in the rocks as he kept realigning his hooves.

Sunshower could not help glancing at his left wing, curved limply along his back. Her eye followed the white, bald slash that ran from the crook of his wing down into the curve of his ribs. Her ears dipped a moment before she remembered herself and brought them up to a dignified height and moved her eyes to meet his.

“Our sisters are here.”

“Yes. So they are.”

Sunshower blinked as the envoys moved into a landing formation. The lead pegasus was blue, her red and yellow tail floated in synch with the tassels. “Thistle Whistle is leading them. But that makes no sense, sir. It is too early for the envoys to come.”

Yarak’s eye never left the banner. “Do you know of any other pegasi bearing those colors and carting air wagons?”

“I do not, sir. But it is only mid-November.” Sunshower sat on her haunches with a little frown. “They are not due for another six weeks. Just after Pegasopolis’ second snowfall. I do not understand why they are so early.”

“Poor scheduling and incompetence.” The wrinkles in the general’s face bent into a scowl. “It is what becomes of making weather shepherds out of warriors. In the hooves of Gale’s soft senators I would not be surprised if they tried to tie in winter at the top of summer.” He sighed and looked at the long, long, way down Sill. The walk would take hours.

“Sir.” Sunshower held out a wing as her father rose to leave. “Allow me to see what it is they want. I will correct their miscalculation before they unsettle anypony.” Earth ponies were steady workers and often even tempered, but they were notoriously set in their ways. She would not let her sisters embarrass themselves by getting into a row, nor allow the workday to be interrupted any more than necessary.

Yarak slowly blinked his brass eyes at her.

“There is no reason you should be hassled just because they cannot keep track of the schedule. And I am never averse to meeting with our sisters.” She looked down at the envoys and tilted her head curiously.

“There must be some reason for this miscalculation. Our clouds misbehave, perhaps it is the same way with theirs?”

General Yarak shook his head. “What troubles our clouds does not trouble theirs.” Sunshower looked back at him, but before she had the chance to respond he continued, “They will not accept that they are early. Attempt to reorder the schedule instead.”

“Yes, sir. I can handle them.”

“Are you sure of that?” Yarak blinked slowly again. “You have been distracted as of late.”

“I am positive, sir.”

The two pegasi looked towards the ground, where the sky wagon settled into the wingless stirring crowd. Thistle Whistle's sharp voice piped in the distance.

The general nodded. “Go, then.”

“I will not disappoint, sir.”

 

* * *

 

It was dark. It was dark and he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe and something was hurting him. He gasped as he broke upon something sharp—a knife, needles, a talon, long black thorns, his own broken ribs curving inward to pierce his lung—and the world was dark but his eyes were blinded by white light.

A galaxy of rainbow coats and wide, frightened, curious eyes stared. When he tried to shut his eyes he couldn’t breathe but he shut them all the same. His ears shrank against the clatter of chains and screaming, dying iron in the faraway dark as the darkness turned bright and burned and he couldn’t run, did not even know what direction to run to.

So many spikes. Spikes crawling out of round walls. Spikes jutting from heads. Making things as they should not be.

A pony’s head bobbing in the water. Speaking of songs of fire.

Static and wings and bells and teeth and tall, tall mirrors.

The soft, terrible sound of sand falling on sand and the snap of bones.

The bear skin was too hot and made him soggy with sweat. The heat built and built and built and it was so dark and he couldn’t breathe.

     

Then: quiet.

Rain.

The gentle echo of a scream fading into walls.

 

Cinquefoil opened his eyes to a dark room and the sweet and sour smell of marigolds, sweat, and candlewax. He nosed the wet thing flopped around his shoulders, wondering why the fur felt so light. He blinked and a green and yellow diamond pattern came into focus. Not a stifling bear skin at all, but a blanket. His own little cross-stitched blanket with the frayed little fringe at the edge. Cinquefoil tasted copper; his cheek stung when his tongue touched it. The fur along his muzzle felt damp. He still couldn’t breathe. Cinquefoil pulled his legs in close and pressed his back against the wall.

Just outside of his room, hooves clopped against the wood floor. A sharp line of light lit the foot of his door, leaking through the knotholes like a knife through a curtain. Was that light from a candle or a horn?

The stallion covered his muzzle with the blanket to hide the sound of his tattered wheezing.  The blanket was useless. Whoever was on the other side of that door could surely hear Cinquefoil’s heart wetly thudding in his throat. He remembered he had not locked his door that night.  

The light was steady; it didn’t fidget or dance against the shadows as it moved. The light was not from a candle.

He’d met four unicorns: two of them were not dangerous at all, one sought him terrible harm, and the last unicorn he was still unsure of. Out of those four, three of them lived in the house. Which was which? Cinquefoil shook his head against the panic dulling his memory and tried to recall the colors of their magic.

Voices at the door called out to him. Cinquefoil’s ears twitched in anxious anticipation of questions he wasn’t ready for. When he did not answer, the voices at the door tried again, then spoke softly to each other. A minute or an hour later, he heard hoofbeats on floorboards and the light went away.

Cinquefoil could not stop shaking. He told his breath to steady and his heart to relax, that he was safe, but his body wouldn’t listen. The blanket was too hot and damp, he felt smothered. Shaking off the blanket didn’t help. Cinquefoil shook the sweat from his coat and began to pace. He went six steps before the bed stopped him. He turned and went ten steps before a wall stopped him. Twelve little steps and another wall.

He snorted and flicked his tail. This room was too small. The walls all too close together and the roof pressed like a millstone. His pale hooves tapped against the wood. He could not help the absurd, awful feeling that the walls were getting thicker, getting closer like a pack of timberwolves, like a circular cage of thorns. Cinquefoil nosed the window open and stuck out his neck as far as it would go, taking a long drink of full, sharp air.

Rain soaked into his skin as he let go of the breath he’d been holding. The Caulkins curved around the little house, breaching up to catch the stars, cradling the wide and empty land stretching between them. Wide and grey, with no walls at all, and only the clouds and stars and maybe even the moon for a ceiling. The pony ducked back into his little room. He lay down in his blankets, then stood again. His hooves fidgeted as he looked at the window.  

Cinquefoil fetched his oilskin cloak from the peg and neatly folded the blanket upon the bed. He took care to keep his hoof steps light and quiet, though the softness in the curve of his hooves ached for dirt and urged him to go faster. Wet open air rolled on his tongue as the door creaked open. He smiled and kicked into a canter.

 

* * *

 

Sunshower skirted the edge of her primary feathers with her teeth until they shone in the moonlight. She bounced in the spongy, wet fluff as she rocked back to inspect her work. The grey cloud undulated as rain pulsed beneath her hooves. Her feathers lay perfect, all aligned and in regulation.

She frowned. No. Not quite regulation.

There, at the edge: a yellow feather half a centimeter out of place. Sunshower twisted her head around and took the wing in her mouth. The least she could do was make these stupid wings fit to be seen. Sunshower still felt the soft understanding in Thistle Whistle’s face pluck at her feathers.

When she'd tried to ascertain the reason the pegasi arrived too early without giving the farmers and miners time to gather their harvest, the envoy of the empire was not offended. She wasn’t even annoyed.

Thistle Whistle just blinked her green eyes and sighed, a shrill whistle hissing through her missing tooth like a kettle. “I suppose it is not any fault of yours, Sunshower,” the envoy said. “Not entirely. What pony can tell the seasons apart living in weather wild as this? Perhaps it was unfair to expect simple earth ponies to keep up.” Thistle Whistle ran her tranquil gaze and low expectations over the crowd, but kept her face towards Sunshower. “Ponies of Caulkin, the weather is out of your hooves. We sympathize. Therefore, the empire will collect the materials you have gathered thus far. Expect our return in two weeks’ time."

Unlike unicorns, the pegasus tribe never perfected the art of lying. The gentle pity in Thistle Whistle’s voice and the understanding in her eyes was nothing but genuine. Sunshower’s ears flushed bright pink from the memory. There was no graver insult than pity. She could not even protest to defend herself, for nothing the envoy said was untrue.

Clouds of the Caulkins did not move when she shoved them, stayed full when she bucked them, and dropped whatever they pleased whenever they pleased, coming and going on a whim. There was only so much one pegasus could do, but Sunshower wasn’t sure if a full team of fifteen could corral this weather. She looked towards the wide wall of clouds that wreathed the tip of Sill. They were full and curdled as any cumulus, but her hooves went though them like candle smoke. A shudder went through the pegasus. And Sill was stranger still. How Yarak managed to linger there so long was a wonder. Sunshower couldn’t stand to be near Sill’s tip any more than absolutely necessary. There had been times her feathers forgot how to catch the air, her wings could not hold her up. More than once she’d fallen.

Sunshower flicked the thought away with a brush of her tail. Focus. She stretched her wings about for a fourth inspection. She studied the reflection of the underside of her wing in her armor. The feathers fanned out straight and glossy, no ragged edges, no bent quills. Satisfied, Sunshower folded her wings and sat.

It was either too cold or too wet for night insects. No owls lived in the Caulkins. The only sound was the rain beneath her hooves and the rustle of her own tail flicking against her legs. She watched the moon--yellow as a bad tooth surrounded by a milk splatter of stars--and sighed. The night watch was dull and Sunshower was glad of it. Dreariness meant peace. Peace meant the earth ponies of the Caulkins slept well and were untroubled and untroubled ponies meant she’d performed at least one job correctly. But it was still dull.  

Then, as if on cue, a sound from below. Sunshower rose and leaned over the side the cloud, angling her ears. The hard, rhythmic clack of horseshoes on rock. And fast. Very, very fast.

Sunshower spread her wings and swept under the clouds. Her ears shot up. A figure flew across the rocks, a flap of green cutting through the gray, brown legs kicking out from beneath. The Mustangian was on the move. Nearly half a mile from the farrier’s house and gaining ground by the second.

Sunshower cut though the wind and the rain like a harsh word in a still room. She felt the light burn in her muscles and allowed herself a small, undisciplined grin. No lurking behind doors tonight, no skulking around secret corners or ducking into wall cracks. Nothing hid in the Caulkins for long. The Mustangian may have managed it for a time, but that time was up. Wherever his destination, he’d not reach it. He was fast, but he was in the open air and Sunshower knew the skies better than he knew the rocks.

Sunshower wheeled down and around him so low the mud dirtied her coat. As the stallion reared she swept to land adjacent, cutting off his path before he could gather himself to bolt. The Mustangian reared again and stumbled backwards. His legs danced under him, as if they were unsure if they should stop or go faster. His eyes were wide and did not recognize her. The stallion opened his mouth to speak, but was breathing too hard from the run to get anything out.

The pegasus lifted an eyebrow at the tightness in his jaw, the shake in his shoulders, the way his strange eyes sank into his head. He blinked as he stared back, the panic in his red rimmed eyes fading with recognition of her face. Sunshower sniffed the air: nothing but rain. She looked in the direction he’d run from: nothing but the mountain and Topsoil’s smithy.  

“Earth pony, why are you so distressed? Are you in danger? Is there something you are running from?”

The stallion shook his head.

“Is there anything you are running towards?”

He thought, then shook his head again. His breathing slowed, though it still was not calm. His face looked so small under the hood. The cloak he wore was far too big, the oilskin pooled around his flanks to engulf him. Sunshower wondered how she never noticed that before. But it was not only that. Something had changed in his face, though Sunshower could not name what.

The stallion’s breathing returned to normal and he stopped trembling. Sunshower stood back and gave him time to explain himself, or apologize for the commotion, or become embarrassed or frustrated that he’d been caught. To do anything. But all he did was stand there in his cacophonous silence.

Sunshower could take no more. She threw back her head with an exasperated sigh. “Oh, for the love of— What in welkin is the _matter_ with you?”

The Mustangian raised his head. The hood fell to his shoulders and Sunshower realized what was wrong with his face. She could look him in the eyes. There was no conspiracy in them, no prowling deceit. Just a pony. A skinny wild pony in the barren mountains, alone and scared.  

“I don’t know,” he said.

Sunshower’s wings fluttered at her sides. She’d planned for a confrontation, maybe dive into a deadly fight, not… whatever this was. “Do… do you have _any_  idea what time it is?”

“Not really, no.”                     

Sunshower flattened her ears. “It is more than an hour past midnight. This is why you have all those bags under your eyes, you do not get proper rest. Do you not know that a pony requires at least six hours of sleep? You should be sleeping.”

The Mustangian flicked his ears. “You’re not sleeping,” he pointed out.

“I am on watch. I have properly rationed out my hours to assure I get the sleep I require. I took three hours of rest at moonrise. I will take another three at moonset.” The pegasus tilted her head towards him and frowned. “I do not understand why you are so wan and afraid. You are not under threat, there is nothing to fear in these mountains.”

The earth pony set his shoulders and frowned back. “I am not afraid. I’m just… troubled, that is all. I felt like taking a run and so I did. Is it a crime to get a little exercise after nightfall?”

“No, but it is highly unusual.” Sunshower flicked her tail and shrugged. “But then, you are also a highly unusual pony. It is my business to account of unusual things, lest they become dangerous things.”

“Is that why you’ve been watching me?”

The pegasus shifted her wings and looked away at the clouds. “Yes. That is the reason.”

The stallion blinked curiously. “Am I a dangerous thing?”

“That is yet to be confirmed.” She turned towards him again and gave him a long look. “Why are you troubled?

“I was, um. I was dreaming before.”

“What? Is that all?” Sunshower’s voice flared out in a short, barking laugh with jagged edges. It sounded a little like a jackdaw. “You are a silly pony. Dreams live only in your head and cannot come out to hurt you. Not unless you allow them to.”

The Mustangian flattened his ears and sunk his head into his shoulders, sullen.

“Oh, come. A fact is a fact, no need to be offended by it.” Sunshower swished her tail and sat down beside him. “Listen. When I was a filly, unmarked and unfledged, I had troublesome dreams as well. They were of large silver birds with no feathers. They had stiff wings and rounded beaks and big black eyes. Some of them had stripes on their wingtips or smaller black eyes running along their side, little things moving about inside them. Other quiet nights I dreamt of jabbering languages that did not exist. It troubled me, for these things seemed real in my head though logic and sense told me there were not. ”

The mare smiled and shook her head at the memory. “It was all very silly and foalish, thinking back on it now. How worried it used to make me. Tell me what it is you dreamed of, Cinquefoil.” Sunshower’s smile faded. His name slipped out before she could remember to stop herself. The syllables still felt strange in her mouth.

Cinquefoil peered at her cautiously. “Why?”

“When you are fully aware of what it is you fear—or what troubles—then you will better understand it. In understanding you will conquer fear and fear will not conquer you.”

“Oh. That makes sense, I suppose.”

“Of course it does. It is the theorem of Wind Whistler. Do you know of her?” Sunshower flipped her tail thoughtfully. “No, that is a foolish question. Of course you would not. She was an ancient pegasus of the Old World. Her logic and wit was unmatched by any other pony, and so it is she my family follows. All our brothers and sisters in the Empire have a matron to follow and keep in their heart when they pass through troubled times.”

“I see,” Cinquefoil said. After a moment of silence he looked Sunshower over from ear to tail with a little frown upon his face. “What do you want from me?”

“I have told you this already. I want to know what it is you dream of."

“No. There must be something else.” He warily looked her over again. “There is always something else.”

Sunshower scoffed. “You have spent too much time amongst the unicorn tribe. What you witness is what you receive. I am all there is to me. What I want from you is for you to speak to me, so that I may understand. The confusion of you frustrates me.”

“I still don’t see why my distress should matter to you at all. It’s my business, not yours. And besides, I thought you disliked me.”

“The liking of you or lack thereof is of no consequence.” Sunshower’s wings fidgeted and her voice tottered as she argued, “Herding weather is not the only job of a pegasus. We also keep fearsome creatures and marauders at bay. We stop danger at the earth ponies’ doorstep, so that your folk may work in peace. That was the arrangement of your tribes. It was our first job and it remains our _best_  job. Therefore, I will not have you be afraid while I am here.”

Sunshower’s voice locked back into step. She bent her neck to look him in the eye. “I will _not_.”

Little droplets flicked off as Cinquefoil raised and lowered his ears. Veins of water ran down the length of his neck, soaking into the lining of his cloak. Sunshower thought she saw that familiar firewater flicker in his eye. But it could have just been a reflection of starlight as the clouds parted.

“It changes,” Cinquefoil told her. “The dream never comes whole, but in little shards. Like a broken mirror that cuts me when I try to touch it. The shards never fall the same way twice, it is always sets rearranging itself. And it does not only come at night. I don’t always know when I’m sleeping. There are parts of the dream that never change, though.”

The Mustangian opened his mouth, then closed it again, uncertainly. He sat quiet for a long time. Sunshower let him.

"Sometimes…" Cinquefoil’s face twinged and pulled at itself, at once a wide, twisted grimace and a tiny frown. "Sometimes my skin feels too small for me. It burns and it is hard to breathe. And...and my bones turn into other bones. I feel soft needles bursting out from my skin. I lose parts of myself and I gain parts of myself and all the time I cannot stop it. It hurts but there is something wrong with me because I cannot move. I must be either asleep or struck stupid, because as it happens I know and yet don't know that it hurts, this thing happening to me. "

His voice shrank and tried to hide itself in the rain. "I can never tell if that part is a dream or not. And that’s not the worst of it."

Cinquefoil watched Sunshower’s expression and he became quiet again.

“Why have you stopped?”

“I’m not sure if I ought to tell you”, Cinquefoil said. “You look like you don’t want to know.”

Sunshower snorted. “What I want is unimportant.”

“Yes, but—”

“But nothing. This is how it works when ponies tell each other of their woe. There are obviously too many troubles for you to carry on your back, so I will take some of it upon mine. We will both be burdened, but shared between us, the burden is lighter.” Sunshower tossed her tail over her hooves. Gently, she sighed, “Your ignorance astounds me, Cinquefoil. Finish.”

The Mustangian sighed. “It isn’t always in fragments. Sometimes it is very clear and doesn’t hurt at all. There are night or afternoons when I sleep or sit quietly with my eyes open, and there is peace. I am listening to the purr of pigeons and the lap of water on rocks. My kin are there. They scold and tease and bicker at me, but we know each other so there is laughter in it. I know who I am and where I belong. I believe that I’m under a sun that warms my shoulders, that I am there.”

“At home?”

“Yes.”

Sunshower’s ears twitched. “Cinquefoil, where is your home?”

“I don’t know.” His shoulders fell and he closed his eyes. “I knew a moment ago…or a month ago, I’m not sure which. It’s doesn’t matter. I don’t know now.”

“I see.” Sunshower regretted asking. She should have scolded him and gone back to the clouds to sulk and be angry. The more the Mustangian spoke, the harder it was to stay angry at him. She knew how to sort out anger, knew the correct spot for it on the mantle place, when to stoke or stifle it so that it could be used properly. But this…

Cinquefoil shrugged apologetically.

The rain clinked off Sunshower’s armor. She took a small step back from him to consider the correct protocol for this situation. Perhaps she ought to apologize to him. Or fly away without another word and forget the entire thing happened. Or perhaps she should tell him to suck it up and get over it or challenge him to a fight or sit here in the mud with him and both of them could just feel awkward, never saying a word to each other.

A cloud coughed thunder and the rain fell in hard, angry drops instead of thin sheets. Cinquefoil flinched at the sound and tried to shake himself off, but he was soaked again before the water left his coat. The inside of his hood was quickly filling with water.

Sunshower’s wings fidgeted once, twice, then she stood. Her right wing slowly fanned out over the earth pony’s head, the rain bouncing harmlessly over the waterproof feathers. It hovered unevenly, twitching in the tiny, endless space between her feathers and Cinquefoil’s mane.

She dared not think what would happen, should that wing go lower. If the tip of a fellow feather brushed the tip of his ear, if his breath tickled the soft down in the crook of the wing. Could her wing touch his withers without curling around them? She didn’t know.

Sunshower did not know much of this strange Mustangian from the far south, but she knew things were never the same after he touched them. One pony would rest her wing upon his shoulder, and another pony would lift it again. Sunshower did not know if she wanted to be that pony yet.

But if Sunshower folded her wing back, Cinquefoil would be wet. So she held it there.

Cinquefoil blinked up at the feathery umbrella, curious, and listened. For once, Sunshower was glad for his silence.

The rain pat upon her primary feathers like a snare drum. _Tappa-tip-tap-tap._ Cinquefoil’s ears twitched at the sound, his head gently bobbing in time. And then, in perfect-pitched tenor, he sang: 

 " _Oh, our girl Jane was fine and fair_  
With rings on her ears and beads in her hair  
But now Jane's got no hair at all  
For her face burned away in the flower's fall  
Trana-na-na-na, gone with the fall  
Shattered and burned black, gone with the fall"

Sunshower screwed up her face and bent her head to look Cinquefoil in the eye. “That song makes no sense whatsoever. Flowers do nothing of that sort when they fall. Are the flowers falling from a tree or a tipped vase? And Jane is a dog’s name. Why would you pierce your dog’s ear or put beads in the fur?”

“Maybe it was an exceptionally dangerous flower?” Cinquefoil offered.

The pegasus smirked. “I would wager an exceptionally delicate dog.”

“A small fluffy dog sniffing flowers and exploding in-into chunks.” Images of decorated Pomeranians falling in many pieces went through Cinquefoil’s head, and the end of the sentence unraveled. It started as a snicker—really more like a sneeze—and build into a jittering ribbon of laughter.

Sunshower tried to swallow her grin. It just made Cinquefoil’s laugh tickle her ribs until her jackdaw trill of a laugh joined it. At the last minute she remembered what time it was and put a hoof over her mouth. “You-you’re going to wake somepony up.”

“That’s alright, I’ll just explain about the exploding fluffy dogs. The miners will understand.”

Both ponies looked at each other in silence, then burst into barely-smothered laughter again.

Sunshower turned to him again when they were done. “I didn’t know you knew how to laugh.”

“Really?” Cinquefoil’s smile leaned sideways on his face. “I was just about to say the same to you.”


	16. Dry Seeds in a High Wind II

“I’m still not sure that you should.” Heartstrings set her lantern down and yawned. Not even the sun was up this early. An oil lamp flickered in the back corners of the room, but even with both lights working together the room was still quite dark. “Maybe ye should wait a little bit.”

Star Swirl twisted his neck, bracing himself against the bed as he pulled the saddlebag straps snug against barrel. “Why not? The Roc won’t be out for at least three more hours and now is about the time the general’s daughter goes to sleep. It is the ideal time to scale the mountain.”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it.” She lifted Star Swirl’s back hoof in a golden aura. “This shoe’s near worn out and it’s the third set you’ve had.” Heartstrings squinted at the hoof in the dim light. “Has this sole even fully healed yet? I don’t think it has.”

“It’s not bleeding anymore and I had the poultice on it half the night. I know how to watch my step, I’ll be fine.”

Heartstrings rolled her eyes. “Oh, aye, just like how ye watched your step before?”

“That was before and this is today. Sill’s not that hard once a pony’s used to it. Besides, if I stay in I’ll be confined to my room all day and there’s no more research to be done there.” Star Swirl took back his foot and glanced behind him. There was a little birch table in the corner, hidden somewhere under the mighty heap of notebook pages and inkwells and quills sticking out in every direction. It looked as if a bird had flown into his room and exploded in a burst of black-ink blood.

Lined along the walls, organized to the best of Star Swirl’s ability (that is, in slightly smaller heaps instead of a great mass), was the fruit of his month long labor in the Caulkins. From the curved claws of the mountains where the miners delved came a stack of crumpled sheets of colorful metal and a collection little glass orbs clinking against each other as they rolled in their box. From the streams adorning the round, rolling mounds he’d pulled out three and a half hubcaps, a mysterious strip of black rubber, and a bright purple kite with lime green words boldly painted across it in a language unknown to ponykind.

Star Swirl discovered just one thing in the bitter heights of Sill. It conquered the back of the room, awkwardly angled to allow room for the bed. An incredible bulk of browning iron welded into the shape of a fin or a sail, though the unicorn wondered how such an object could catch the wind. It was possible it was meant for the water or land, but his instincts told him different. The thick scent of rust overran his incense and gave Star Swirl headaches when slept under it for too long. The iron fin ate nearly all of the window, thin rectangles of pre-dawn light snuck around its edges to filter across the floorboards. When asked how he managed to sneak it into the house without anypony’s knowledge, Star Swirl just preened and pointed at the fourth bell jingling on his cape.

Star Swirl looked back at Heartstrings with a sideways smile. “’Tis a bit crowded in there now. And since the discovery of the iron fin, I can’t seem to focus on my magic. I can study and research my findings just fine, but before I’m done focusing my horn or reading my runes I’m tired and get headaches.” He twitched his nose at the stink of iron and peeked over Heartstrings’ shoulder at the open door. “And besides, if I leave now, I can work in peace for sure. Lightheart never wakes up this early and she never goes five feet from the house. I don’t think she even has shoes." 

The minstrel followed his gaze. “You’ll have to talk to her eventually.” 

“Feh. I’ve worthier worries than Lightheart’s mismanaged guilt. Betwixt a tryst with an earth mare and an absconded groom, the degradation of House Sparkler lies not with the latter.” Star Swirl’s features curdled into a sneer. “Let her stew. Each of her distractions bills another night of screams. I shan’t have it. ”

Heartstrings only frowned at that. Neither of them had gone back to bed after Cinquefoil woke them, though she suspected Star Swirl was already awake for he’d smelled of ink in the hallway. She wondered when he slept.

Star Swirl’s voice brought her attention back. “But if you’re so worried about the state of my hooves, you are welcome to accompany me.” He thought a second and added, “Presuming you’re not busy entertaining, of course.”

“Topsoil told me she’s not working today, so neither am I.” The mare tossed her white mane over her shoulders and smiled. “Been a while since I’ve had a decent walk. I can see for meself how silver shoes stand against Sill.”

Heartstrings left her lyre in the center of her bed as a sign she’d be back for anypony looking for her. After packing a lunch of oat and apple salad, she met Star Swirl at the door and together they made to scale the mountain.

Last night’s storm clouds had rained themselves out. The only clouds to be seen in the Caulkins was the murky film of fog that lapped over their backs and the drizzle was so thin it was as if it wasn’t raining at all. A good omen.

Two hours into the trek, as they carefully tread above the rooftops, the sun came out. Heartstrings craned back her neck to see the tip of Sill, frowning when she found her view still obscured by full, fluffy cumulus. The light made the wet ground glisten like an oil slick. The rocks sheened pale purple, not the usual grey. Her eye trailed up to where the clouds lingered. The color built and condensed with height; the top of Sill was glossy with stripes of violet either frighteningly iridescent or hopelessly dull, depending on the light. The color swirled in manic, whirling directions, like mist dripping from a cauldron.

“Star Swirl, does it always look like this?”

The stargazer’s pink beard floated in the wind. “No. I’ve never been here while this much sun was out.” He squinted at the violet streaks. He wondered if Sill had opal deposits or if the innards were brightly colored like a geode. But the path of color seemed more like spilt ink than ore or rock. “Hmm.”

The wind kicked up, tickling the fur in Star Swirl’s pricked ears. The bells twitched and tinkled as his cape flapped across his back. He swiveled his ears, pivoting on his heels mid-step. “Heartstrings…” he whispered without looking back at her. “D’you hear that?”

The minstrel hopped over a jagged strip of stones and turned her ears about. “Don’t know. What am I supposed to be hearin’?”

“Not clear enough t’tell. But I thought that…” Star Swirl relaxed his ears. “Never mind. Whatever it was, I can’t hear it now.”

“Oh. Well, if ye canna tell me what you’re listening for, can ye at least tell me what we’re looking for?”

“I…I’m not sure yet.” Star Swirl laid his ears back. “Something that’s more substantial than that hoard built up in my room. All that collection proves is humans were here once, but who’s to say that ‘once’ was a day or a thousand years ago? We’ll know what we’re looking for when we find it.”

Heartstrings glanced over her shoulder and blinked in surprise. Topsoil’s roof was a tiny white triangle in the distance, one of many dollhouses in an organized jumble at Sill’s foot. “We’re this high already?”

“The mountain looks worse than it is,” Star Swirl said. “Weather permitting, I can be up and down it between breakfast and supper time. It is far slower going down. But Sill’s height is no illusion, ‘tis miles high. It ought to take an athletic unicorn at least two days to scale, yet I arrive at my door before sunset with time to spare. And I am certainly no athlete. ‘Tis a curiosity.”

“So ye seen the top of the mountain, then?”

He nodded. “Twice. The first time I did it I was so excited. My bells jingled in my ears as my nose touched the clouds and in the depths of myself I knew—Heartstrings, I _knew_ —I was so close. The clouds of Sill are so thick nopony can see the tip, not from air or sky, so surely that was how Yarak hid them. Above the spongy cumulus I’d surely find a door, a suspended cage in the sky, perhaps a hidden stair leading to a secret village.”

Star Swirl brushed back his mane and closed his eyes with a sigh. “All I found was thin air and the sky. I stood there a long time with my bells tinkling in the wind, waiting for something to happen. I came home well after dark that night. Do you remember?”  

Heartstrings thought, then nodded. “After the end of my set. Bumped into that lush Hardtack as he was leaving and nearly started a fight.”

“Did I?” Star Swirl shrugged. “I don’t recall, that was a distracting night. Anyhow, just before sunset I looked down. Yarak lay several feet under me, curled up in a crook of rock like a dog at the fireplace. He was looking up at me. ‘Twas hard to see through the clouds, but I think he smiled at me. He smiled and I… I never felt so tired.”

Heartstrings leaned against him sympathetically. “I suppose that was when ye made the way back down?”

“Actually, no. Something did happen: the sun went down. And as I looked, the stars came out. More stars than I’d ever, ever seen, even with my spyglass, even in the observatory I’ve never seen so many. So close I could taste the cold burn of them on my tongue. I found the constellations and watched the moon come up. And I wasn’t tired anymore.” Star Swirl’s smile waxed and waned. “I was supposed to learn how to do that, you know.”

“Do what?”

“The moon. After my mother retired, I mean. I was to take the moon after the tenth hour, move it on its path, then turn it over to the unicorn who had it for the twelfth hour. Da was so excited. Mother, too. Of course, that was before my mark came and I still couldn’t levitate a quill.”

“Still can’t.”

Star Swirl pursed his lips.

“Well, ye can’t!” Heartstrings swished her tail. “If it helps, I cannae write at all.”

The stargazer angled his head to watch a jackdaw land overhead. It beat its wings, cawing as it tried to crack a nut on the rocks. “I was first in my class for histories and theorem. But theory is nothing without magic to back it up. Especially in House Galaxy.”

“But you’re not hollow, though.” The minstrel hummed in thought. “If ye truly traveled through time as you say—”

“And I _did_.”  

Heartstrings held up a calming, defensive hoof. “Then shouldn’t have somepony have been able to tell? It sounds like a grand spell, there must’ve been some trace or sign or—”

Star Swirl laughed mirthlessly. “Not without reproducing the spell. Besides that, even now the spells I cast leave me spent and frail. When it comes, it is strong, and always it is remarkably strong, but when it is gone, it truly is _gone_. No more magic in my horn than in our Cinquefoil’s hooves.” He looked back at Heartstrings’ sympathetic expression and snorted. “Ah, but never fear. House Galaxy always has use for its sons. Even if that use only comes in the springtime.”

“...oh.” The mare’s ears dipped. “Twinkleshine.”

“My fiance was beautiful as morning dew sparkling upon the cobwebs that stretched across the inside of her skull. Magnificent green eyes wide and empty as my future.” He laughed again, cruelly earnest this time. “I told her that once. She actually took it as a complimen--ouch!”

Star Swirl stumbled, catching himself at the last moment before he fell. His back leg was hock-deep in an ugly rift in the rock. He waved Heartstrings off as she looked him over. “No, I’m alright. Think I cut my hoof on something, but I’m fine, merely just surPRISED!”

He yanked his leg back to him, but it got stuck at the lip of the hole. “Something’s got my leg!” Star Swirl cringed with a rather undignified whine. “Ohh, it’s all small and cold and-and-and with fingers!”

Heartstrings flicked her ears. “Fingers? D’ye mean like—”

“No, no, nothing like those. These are too small and they have no nails and they’re all furry and cold and wiggly oh get it off get it off, it feels all _weird_!” Star Swirl cringed again and yanked his leg harder.

A raspy yelp rang out from under the rocks.

Heartstrings lit her horn and lifted away the stones cluttering the hole. Star Swirl lifted his leg out. A red ball of undulating fuzz filthy with dust covered his hoof. It blinked up at them with big blue eyes.

“Hi,” it said. “You stepped on me.”

Star Swirl blinked back at it. “Sorry?”

“It’s okay,” said the fuzz. “I know you didn’t mean to. ...Still hurt.”

Heartstrings squinted, trying to let more sunlight into the rift. “I think there are more!” She lit her horn and lifted up two more balls of blinking fur, one bright green and the other pumpkin orange.

The red creature grinned and dropped from Star Swirl’s hoof. He (for the voice sounded male) outstretched his arms, tripped and fell over his own feet as he rushed forward on unseen legs. The furry things met each other with joyous cries and did a waddling little dance on the rock, bouncing and clapping their furry little hands.

“We’re out!” Their voices were identical, save for a miniscule difference in pitch if a pony listened close. “We’re out, we’re out, we’re out! We’re out, hooray!”

Heartstrings smiled as she watched them celebrate. “Oh, wee darlings. Aren’t they just the sweetest wee fellows, Star Swirl?”

Star Swirl’s nose wrinkled like withered rose. “What _are_  they?”

The furballs turned as one to beam at him and lifted their joined hands. Absolutely elated with themselves they crowed, “We’re bushwoolies!”

“We were stuck in that jar!” cried the red bushwoolie.

“Oh, yeah. Yep, yeah, real small jar,” said the green one.

“Small and dark!” the orange one added.

“Small and dark and smelly,” finished the red. “Not fun, nope, nuh-uh. Not fun at all.”

The unicorns looked at each other, then back down.

“Bushwoolies?” Star Swirl squinted skeptically. “Surely not the same bushwoolies of Dream Valley.”

“D’ye know of any other sort?” Heartstrings held out her hoof. “They fit the description well enough: merry, talkative bits of fluff.” She poked one with her hoof and giggled when the bushwoolie did.

“But the bushwoolies are supposed to be extinct. Nopony’s seen one in years.”

“Bushwoolies aren’t extinct,” the orange one said. He rubbed his belly with his hands, then rubbed the bushwoolie beside him. “We’re right here, see?”

“Yep.”

“Oh yeah, yeah, here. Right here, yup.”

The red bushwoolie waddled up to Star Swirl and tugged on his mane. “You’re little ponies, right? We don’t know you yet. Are you visiting?”

“Maybe he’s a big brother,” suggested the orange bushwoolie. “Do you know where Paradise Estate is? Magic Star’s gonna wonder where we went.”

“She’s gonna be worried.”

“Yeah, worried.”

Star Swirl just gaped at them. The red bushwoolie tapped a stubby finger against his mouth. “Do you know Magic Star? Or Shady?”

“Maybe you know Ribbon?” the green bushwoolie offered. “Or Galaxy or Buttons? Oh, or Glory? They’re unicorn ponies, just like you!”

“Yeah! Long horns on their head,” said the red. He looked at the horn spiraling from Star Swirl’s forehead. “Yours is longer, maybe.”

Star Swirl opened and shut his mouth wordlessly. He took a closer look at the rift the bushwoolies came from. The sun glinted off a black jar, little gold runes he couldn’t read embossed along the top and bottom. There was a jagged hole where Star Swirl’s hoof stomped into it. “How long have you all been in that jar?”

The bushwoolies blinked, looked at each other, and shrugged. “Uh. A while?”

“What is the last thing ye remember?” asked Heartstrings.

The orange bushwoolie rubbed his nonexistent chin. “We were going home.”

The green one smiled. “For a tea party!”

“There’s gonna be ice cream there.” The orange bushwoolie held up a studious finger. “That’s a thing for eating and _not_  a thing for playing in. Sweet Stuff taught us that us. Ice cream’s tasty.”

“Oh, yeah,” the others agreed. “Very tasty, yup.”

“You can put peanuts on it!”

“And chocolate!”

“And bananas!”

“And—”

“Focus, bushwoolies,” said Heartstrings. “Ye were going to the Estate and then what happened?”

“We were walking and then we ran into the witch,” said the green bushwoolie.

“Ohhh, she got mad,” sighed the red. “Real mad. Bushwoolies got too close to her house. Said a lot of mean stuff.”

“Not nice.”

“Made me drop the sprinkles.” The green bushwoolie pouted and crossed his arms. “Ice cream’s not the same without sprinkles.”

“She yelled,” said the red.

“A _lot_ ,” sulked the green. “She hit me with a spoon and then she chased us in that jar.”

“And closed the jar,” said the red.

“But then you opened the jar!” yelled the orange one. “And now bushwoolies are free! Hooray!”

“Free!” cried the others. “Hooray! Hooray for being free!” They leapt upon Star Swirl, clutching at his withers and cuddling his legs. “Hooray!”

Star Swirl was quite distressed.

“What’s your name?” asked the orange bushwoolie.

“He’s Star Swirl! And I’m Heartstrings,” chirped Heartstrings.

“Ohhhh, okay. Hooray for Star Swirl!”

“Our hero!”

“Yay! Thank you, Star Swirl!”

“Yeah, thanks a lot.”

“We love you!”

“You’re the best!”

“Yeah, yeah, the best. That’s you, alright!”

“Wouldn’t mind you coming sooner...”

Star Swirl looked as if he’d eaten a crate of thumbtacks. “Don’t mention it.”

Heartstrings gently lifted the orange bushwoolie from Star Swirl’s neck and set him down on the rock. “Bushwoolies, I don’t know how t’tell ye this, but ye’ve been in that jar for… oh, my, it be hundreds of years.”

The bushwoolies just blinked at her.

“D’ye know how long that is, dears? ‘Tis a very long time.” She smiled sadly at them. “Magic Star and Buttons aren’t waiting on ye, I’m afraid. There is no more Paradise Estate.”

“Not even a Dream Valley,” said Star Swirl.

The red bushwoolie plopped himself sidesaddle on Star Swirl’s back. “We missed the party?”

“Aye,” Heartstrings sighed. “By quite a bit.”

“Oh.” The bushwoolies looked at each, lost for a moment. They frowned, shuffled, and whispered amongst themselves in overlapping voices. Then they shrugged.

“That’s okay,” the red one said.

The orange one nodded. “We’ll catch the next one!”

“Yeah, the next one.”

The green bushwoolie murmured, “Maybe we shoulda come from the Moochick’s house a different way...”

The red one waved his legs. “It was faster though the witches’ house, though.”

“Yeah,” the green agreed. “Much, much faster.”

Star Swirl frowned and tried to shake them off. They both just patted his mane and smiled. The stargazer sighed and resigned himself to fuzzy misery. “You keep mentioning a witch. Do you mean Katrina?”

The bushwoolies laughed.

“Katrina’s nice now,” said the orange.

“Super nice,” the red agreed.

The green smiled. “Yeah, nice, real nice. Lots of cuddles.”

“Gave up the witchweed. Plays badminton now!” The red bushwoolie waved a stubby little arm. “ _These_  witches were mean. Three of them.”

“Made lots of Smooze,” sighed the green. He frowned. “I don’t like Smooze, nope. It made our friends act grumpy and sad. No good times.”

“No good. Nuh-uh. Yech,” the others mumbled.

Star Swirl’s neck yanked back to stare at the fuzzy things on his back. His mouth fell open as understanding crept over him. The red bushwoolie petted his beard.

The unicorn took another look at Sill. A long, long, look. At the gabbro near Topsoil’s house, at the andesite they’d tripped over, the obsidian shards that cut his hoof the day before. He hadn’t thought much of the obsidian at the time, just presumed it more flotsam of human tools. Star Swirl’s eyes widened at the violet streaking the cusp of Sill, iridescent in the sunlight, with a distinct gloominess. Sill was no mountain.

“Gloom,” he whispered. His mouth was dry. “The Volcano of Gloom.”

“Imagine, scores of little ponies working and sleeping below the house of old Hydia herself.” Heartstrings chuckled with wonder. “Cannae imagine the fits the old hag would have. But shouldn’t a volcano have lava?”

“It must have died. Or…” Star Swirl looked out at the rest of the Caulkins, disjointed and unmatched against each other. “Or this range somehow joined with the humans’ Old World mountains.”

“Oh, yeah.” The red bushwoolie nodded solemnly. “Yeah, yeah, that’s it alright.”

“Lots of mountains, yup,” hummed the green.

He stroked his beard in thought. “Or the witches did something to it, so that it doesn’t behave like a volcano. They were able to live in the middle of one without burning to a crisp, so they must have done _something_.”

“Uh-huh,” the bushwoolie said. “Yup, yup, you got it.” The others nodded in agreement.

Star Swirl gave them a sideways look. “Or maybe the White Roc is made of lemonade.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah.”

“Absolutely, yeah.”

“Lots and lots of lemonade, yup.”

Heartstrings nudged Star Swirl’s shoulder. “Look who’s up.”

They could easily see from this height: a brown unmarked stallion coming away from Sill, a bag bouncing upon his flank. He was going at a brisk trot, a bit of a spring in his step. He paused a moment to look back at the mountain, looking up and down it. Then he turned and went on his way.

“I wonder where it is he’s headed to,” Heartstrings said quietly. “I’ve never known him to take walks this early.”

The red bushwoolie crawled his way atop Star Swirl’s head, ignoring the stallion’s insistent protests. He gripped the horn to keep his balance as he held a fuzzy hand over his eyes and squinted. “Is that your friend? I remember him.”

“He stepped on our jar,” added the orange bushwoolie. He twiddled his fingers in his hair thoughtfully. “Does he know Megan?”

“Oh yeah, sure.” The red nodded to himself. “Sure, all the humans gotta know Megan.”

“And humans are friends with little ponies,” put in the green bushwoolie. He scratched his head in puzzlement. “Must like ponies a _lot_  if he decided to be one.” The other bushwoolies nodded and hummed in agreement.

“How’d ye know that?” Heartstrings lifted the red bushwoolie in a gold aura and hovered him between the unicorns. “How do ye know he’s not really a pony?”

The green bushwoolie fiddled his hands. In a voice too soft to hear over Heartstrings, he mumbled, “ _Almost_  not a pony…”

“He stepped on our jar, too.” The red one waved his unseen legs as he floated and put his hands in the empty air around him. He was very impressed. “We felt him.”

“We always feel ‘em,” said the green one. “The others too. Volcano twitches when they come.”

“Yeah, yeah. Grumbles and tumbles, yeah.” The orange bushwoolie tugged on Heartstrings’ foreleg. “Can I have a ride too, please?”

“Oooh!” The green one gasped. “Oooh, yeah, yeah, me too?”

“And me!” cried the red, though he was still in the air.

“Others?” Star Swirl plucked the orange bushwoolie from the ground and lightly shook him in his hooves. “Other humans? Do you know where they are? Do you know where they are? Do you know how we can get them out?” His voice built into a frenzy. “Are they here?!”

“Y-yeah. Yeah!” The orange bushwoolie pouted and squirmed in Star Swirl’s hooves. This was not the ride he wanted at all.

“Where?!”

“Here!”

Star Swirl clenched his jaw and stared at the fuzzy thing for a silent minute. Then shook the bushwoolie until Heartstrings lifted him out of his reach.

“Hey now, that’s enough of that. That’ll do nothing but make him sad an’ simple. Here, let me try.” She gently nosed the creature’s back. “No, dear. What we’re wantin’ to know is where they are _exactly_.” 

The bushwoolie peered at her, confused. “Exactly?”

“Yes. Can they be found atop Sill? Or will we be findin’ them below it?”

“Yes,” said the orange bushwoolie.

"Are they far away or very close?” asked Star Swirl.

The green bushwoolie smiled. “Yes.”

“Are they well?” asked Heartstrings. 

Star Swirl loomed with his cape fluttering at his sides. “Or do they fair poorly?”

“Yes.” The red bushwoolie sulked at Heartstrings’ hooves. He didn’t think his ride should have been over yet.

Star Swirl groaned and took a long, steadying breath. “But which question are you agreeing to?”

The bushwoolies blinked at him. “All of them!" Then they hugged him again, for Star Swirl was not making a happy face and hugs had a long, proud history of turning frowns upside down.

“Never have I so sympathized with a witch’s desire to shove small animals into jars.”

“Hm. Let’s have another try at this.” Heartstrings knelt beside the red bushwoolie. It smiled and touched her nose. “Bushwoolies, can ye tell us how we can get to the humans?”

He yawned. “Uh-huh.”

“Lovely. Now, how can we do that?”  

The red bushwoolie looked back at his friends, who stared back at him. As one, they turned and said, “Forget-Me-Not.”

The green one rubbed his eyes. “Forget-Me-Not's in the glass.”

“Yeah,” sighed the red. He cuddled Heartstrings’ hoof and yawned again. “Forget-me-not when the clouds shrink.”

“Grows with love and sunshine,” said the green.

“Just love might do,” finished the orange.

“Volcano mountain’s deep.” The red bushwoolie struggled to keep his eyes open. “Bushwoolies know. Bushwoolies was in it for a long time.”

“Yeah, long time.” The orange bushwoolie curled up next to his friend. “Real, real long time.”

The green one just nodded, cuddled next to the orange and went to sleep.

Heartstrings and Star Swirl tried to ask again of the humans’ location and what they’d meant by all that talk of flowers in vases and love. But if the bushwoolies even managed to rouse from their slumber, all the unicorns got was a yawn and a blink. 

The mare began piling them into her saddlebag. “Even if we don’t get anything else out of them, I’m not leavin’ them to get down this peak all by…” her voice grew quiet. “All by themselves.”

The clouds of Sill twisted in on themselves, sloshing like broth at the bottom of a bowl. A great eye blinked and a dishwater claw gripped the rock face.

“It’s awake,” Heartstrings whispered.  

“We must fetch them after dark.” Star Swirl made himself small amongst the rocks as he watched the cloudy wings smother the sky. “That much I can figure out. The clouds get smaller after the Roc goes to bed. The Roc, too.”

The White Roc angled its great neck down. General Yarak stepped from the caves in his unhurried, unbreakable way. He and the Roc looked at each other and the pegasus lifted his wing to touch the massive talon. Together, they looked at the round mountain at the Caulkins’ edge and the little brown dot traveling towards it.

Yarak watched the round mountain several minutes more. Then he tucked in his wing and continued on up Sill. The Roc fidgeted, making a creaking, sandy noise deep in its throat. It brought its wings down and let the sky back in, then closed its eyes and settled.

Heartstrings kept her eye on the sky, squinting to suss out which parts were feathers and which parts were clouds. If there was a difference between the two at all. “Such a big creature,” she whispered. “I wonder what it eats…”

A sleepy voice mumbled at her side, muffled in the saddlebag. “Hearts,” the bushwoolie said.

 

* * *

 

Three fillies stared on the far side of the fence, whispering to each other in their bows and grass-stained dresses. When Cinquefoil looked back at them they cantered off, giggling at each other.

Cinquefoil twitched his ears and looked to Topsoil, who was hoof-deep in a patch of dirt.

“Pay them no mind,” Topsoil said. “It can be unnerving to see an unmarked stallion. They just don’t know what peg to hang you on. Don’t worry about it.”

“Oh, I’m not worrying about it.” Cinquefoil lightly smiled. “I’ve figured that out already, trust me. I was just wondering about the weather. The sun is out.”

“Enjoy it while you can. Doesn’t happen often.”

“I noticed.” He peered over the brown mare’s shoulder. Light green fuzz dusted the dirt at her hooves. Thin, crooked shoots bent at the edge of a wire enclosure nearby. When the breeze blew they rattled against each other with a crinkling, wrinkling sound. “I, um… like your garden.”

Topsoil lifted an eyebrow. “Are you being nice or sarcastic?”

“Neither. It’s not amazing, but I do like it better than no garden at all.” He nosed at the green fuzz. “Is that feathergrass?”

“It’s trying to be.” Topsoil covered her seeds and shook her head. “The poor shoots have tried their best since midsummer, but I never get anything taller than two inches. Every time I get something close to green there’s a cold snap or a shot of hail or a dust storm blocks out the sun. The tomatoes are all dead already.”

“Not all. The stem’s only just yellowing and look, those two leaves on the far right still have green in them.”

“Good as dead, then.” Topsoil dusted off her hooves and looked the stallion over. “So! What can you do?”

“Do?”

“Yes, what is it you like to do? What are you good at? You didn’t hope to stay in your room for the rest of time, I hope.” She grinned at him. “Don’t know what your scholar friend told you, but most ponies work for a living. What did you do with your own folk?”

Cinquefoil’s ears dipped a bit. “I’m not sure. It’s been a while. I gardened some and took care of pigeons. Messenger pigeons, I think.” His ears pricked. “Oh! I also know how to set traps to catch things.”“I thought you Mustangians grazed and traded for food. Since when do nomads garden?” Topsoil paused and screwed up her face. “...Set traps?”

“Yes, for pests. Look, you don’t need to keep a garden in one place. You can put plants in little boxes and take them around with you, water them just the same as flowers in a pot. The tomatoes may do better if you take them inside where the cold can’t kill it.”

Topsoil swished her tail skeptically. “There’s no sun indoors.”

“What, you don’t have windows?”

“There won’t be room for the roots to grow.”

“True,” said Cinquefoil. “The plants will be smaller and they probably won’t taste as good. But they’ll live. Probably do better than they would outside in the rock and eroding soil. I’m impressed you even managed this much.”

She shrugged. “It’s my talent.”

“I’m not saying that it will work. There was a lot more sunshine where I was from, and I have no idea how the grass will take. But I still think it’s worth trying.”

Topsoil clicked her tongue. “Well, it couldn’t hurt. And I do hate those overpriced imports.” She rubbed her chin and clicked her tongue again. “Listen, how’s about you go head on up to Hardtack’s place and see if he’s got any spare seeds? The colt still owes me for last month.”

“Who is Hardtack?”

“Tall green fellow who’s got all those spots on his rump and legs. He sailed ships once upon a time and now he spends his weekends making your friend play that filthy song about the seapony. He lives out far from Sill on the wide dome mountains. See it?”

Cinquefoil stretched his neck as he squinted. He could just barely make out a trail of white smoke. “On the far right side of the mount?”

“Yup. It’s a bit of a walk but you leave now, you’ll be back well before dinner. Maybe earlier, since it’s such a nice day out. You can use Lightheart’s saddlebag.”

He nodded and went on his way to prepare. When Cinquefoil went to tell Heartstrings goodbye, he was startled to discover the mare wasn’t asleep. Nor was she in the smithy, or downstairs, for he’d passed through there already. He glanced at the bed. Her saddlebag was gone, but she’d left her lyre. Odd.

Cinquefoil peered into the room next door. There were piles of papers and assorted oddities of all kinds, including a great iron fin whose proper name he knew but could not remember (he knew it flew, but that was all), but no Star Swirl.

Cinquefoil rubbed the back of his head and frowned. “Hm.” The two stallions rarely spoke to each other, but it still didn’t seem right to leave for the day without telling the unicorns where he was going. They had been with him for so long, Cinquefoil wasn’t sure what to do with the space they left behind.

What would they do if they returned and he wasn’t there? Would they be worried? They seemed to worry a lot. Perhaps they would go looking for him, or become cross or curious. That was the trouble of knowing other ponies; it created obligations as he learned the grimoire of their habits, the bridle of their names in his mouth.

He settled for saying goodbye to Lightheart instead.

Cinquefoil left with his iron shoes clinking and the morning mist upon his back. The drizzle was so light he hadn’t even needed to take his oilskin along. He tilted his head to feel the full embrace of the sun. Cinquefoil stopped to trace his eye up the mountain. He smiled, wondering if he might see a splash of yellow in the grey. He knew he wouldn’t, for it was still very early in the morning, but he looked anyway. It seemed such a shame to sleep though such a nice morning. Even Sill itself seemed glad of the light and glistened in the sunshine.

“Ah, well.” He flicked his tail and went on.

The Mustangian eased his pace as he approached the round mountain, remembering the taxing climb up Sill. The dome softly loped down to meet him and the flat paths were easy on the hooves. It lacked the unforgiving rock of the other mountains, covered in a dusky coat of soft, infertile soil and haphazard patches of dead grass.

Cinquefoil went at a trot. Not a trifling amble or an exerted power walk, but a nice and sensible trot. It kept him on task but allowed him space to admire the jackdaws quilting the sky and hopping in stubby trees. A weasel looked back at him as it scurried to its burrow, a limp animal in its mouth. And he’d have never guessed there were so many goats.

He’d seen a few of them from his window. In the early morning they lingered around the claw-like peaks, nosing around the mines until somepony shooed them away. This must be where they went. They were scattered all about him, dozing under dead trees, bounding along the mountainside on stiff legs, or just sitting out in the open doing nothing in particular.

Cinquefoil approached an older buck relaxing on the side of the road. He was a large fellow, short-bearded, the long crescent of horns curved over his back.

“Good morning,” said Cinquefoil.

The buck yawned and scratched his rump with his horns.

“Do you know Hardtack? Or how far his house is from here?”

The pony glanced at his surroundings, rolling and tan and full of wild things. The chimney smoke had gone away and he could not recall if he was to go east or west or upwards to the top of the mount. Cinquefoil was starting to worry he’d gone to the wrong mountain and would have to walk across the range again. “Have you seen any house at all?”

The goat blinked one horizontal eye, then the other. He nodded his arched horns to the left. “Bah,” he said.

“…Okay. Is it very far?”

The buck sniffed, he had a bit of a runny nose. “Beeh-baaah.” Then he flicked his little tail and wandered off. Cinquefoil tried speaking to some of the other goats, but had no better luck. The kids bleated and giggled at each other as they tried to use Cinquefoil as a climbing rock. The other bucks were more concerned with sleeping and the nannies did not acknowledge him at all.

Cinquefoil sighed and went on, wondering if there was a language barrier or if goats were dull creatures and he’d wasted his time. He glanced behind him and hummed in puzzlement. The goats were all full fluffy coats and full bellies, in perfect health save for a runny nose or two.

The stallion eyed the dirt and the yellow patches around him. “What have they been eating?” he asked the air. As far as he knew, goats could eat just about anything, but surely they needed more than bark and dead grass.

“I should ask somepony about that later. Topsoil might know something. Or Star Swirl, he knows about other creatures and cultures.”

Even as he said it, he knew he wouldn’t ask. Star Swirl didn’t like talking in public and Cinquefoil didn’t like being in small rooms with him. He didn’t like being in small rooms at all, really. This morning he’d come downstairs not five minutes after he awoke. The wide dining hall was nice at first, but over the course of an hour it became tolerable and then excruciating. It was nicer outside.

Cinquefoil slowed to a stop and pricked his ears. Something didn’t feel right. A cloud of jackdaws surged into the sky, cracking the air with their calls.

In the distance, the mass of goats swelled against each other like the tide. Cinquefoil’s hooves fidgeted as his muscles bunched tight. He heard the wet flap of a tongue rolling over teeth. A low, anticipatory growl.

The wind changed. The stallion’s nose flared at the distinct scent of wet fur and meaty breath. A scent he knew very well. Slowly, easily, with no sudden moves, Cinquefoil angled his head to the side.

The dog was piebald and thin, with tall ears and a pointed muzzle, tail coiled tight over its back. The fur was prickled and brown from the mud and Cinquefoil saw the flash of teeth in the dark mouth. It was nearly as tall as he was. There was no collar.

Cinquefoil nickered and took a step back.

Another dog loped over the horizon, sandy colored and thinner than the first. Three more followed. They lowered their heads, tails rigid. The chuff of their breath made little clouds in the air.

No trees in sight. Not that they’d do him any good. He longed to search for a spare branch to wield, a loose stone to throw, but he dared not move his eye. Cinquefoil’s legs fidgeted. He couldn’t outrun a dog. Certainly not a pack of them. Especially not when they had hunger to spur them on.

The piebald dog was so close he could the see tartar on its teeth. Cinquefoil’s legs danced and paced beneath him. His ankles bore scars from the first and only time he’d tried to outrun dogs, his legs should have known better.

The piebald watched him and did not move. The sandy one raised its hackles. The others were out of his line of sight and the wind changed again. Claws scraped across the dirt and Cinquefoil caught a blur of motion as he jumped to the side and struck out with his hooves. A wire-haired dog ducked and circled away, yapping. The piebald sprang. The stallion felt the snort of breath as its teeth clacked on empty air. The pack bared their teeth and surged.

Cinquefoil ran.

There was no build from stillness to sprint; the little pony stumbled in the dirt trying to keep up with himself. The piebald dog snapped at his barrel as the wirehair and two others came at his left. Cinquefoil reared and kicked the piebald, regaining his footing as the dog yelped. He snorted, untangled his legs, and ran on.

The furor of snarls straightened his back. His neck stretched out, his ears tucked in, and he kicked into a full gallop. Cinquefoil shivered at the full shock of his hooves on packed earth. The wind bit at his nose, his mane lashed along his neck as the ground, the sky, and the trees mashed together in a blur. He knew he’d cut from the path when he felt the hard skip of rock on iron. He felt no burning effort in his lungs, no ache in his muscles. His chest filled like a mainsail to push him until he flew.

It was then he realized: the world was quiet except for the sound of himself. The pony spared a glance behind him, sure that teeth were inches from his hock. There was a mouse scurrying across a leaf pile and his own hoofprints. And that was all.

Cinquefoil slowed to a trot. He saw a waddling badger to his left, a flat boulder to his right, but no lolling tongues or piebald fur. He twitched his ears, perplexed. They’d looked too hungry to simply give up. Were they frightened away, the same as the wyverns when the Roc arrived?

He looked to the jackdaws mulling in the trees, cawing and chaffing and making a merry racket. The sky was peaceful: a drizzly blue-grey striped in slivers of light. Cinquefoil squinted down the long slope of land behind him.

Five small figures stared up at him, pink tongues hanging from their mouths. Three dogs wobbled on their paws, spent and hunched as the other two sullenly paced back and forth. The piebald one yapped at him half-heartedly.

Farther down, little flecks of goat pranced and bleated along the thin dirt path. There was no more mountain to climb. He’d reached the top.

The brown pony nickered in wonder and a smile wobbled across his face. “What? That’s not all, is it?” His voice shook, giddy with disbelief. “I guess you’re not that hungry after all.” He chuckled and tossed his head at them.

The piebald dog yapped at him again, then raised its tail and lumbered off to find an easier meal, the pack trailing close behind.

Cinquefoil shook the drizzle from his mane. “Suit yourselves.”

The wind rustled Cinquefoil’s mane. He spun on his heels and ran on until the dirt caked his hooves black.

The nightmares and sleepless nights faded into the distance. No clouds of moth-eaten memories, no dogs, no lonely little rooms, no chime of bells or white skies or thorns or fear. Cinquefoil was too fast for fear. He knew they would be back. On another sunless winter’s day they’d come lumbering back. When he slept or ate or stood a bit too still for a bit too long, they’d catch up. But for now, it was all Cinquefoil and the sky and the wide, welcoming, wonderful ground.

He slowed and stopped at the sound of water. A little ways away, a creek rushed down the mountain side. It ran swift in the little trench it carved for itself in the rock and it was framed with green. Lots of green and little bursts of white and yellow flowers. Cinquefoil smiled to himself. It seemed a nice place to eat his lunch, for the run had made him hungry and he realized he was a little tired after all.

The stallion knelt and laid out his apple and seedcakes. He drank a bit of creek water and rubbed his nose against one of the yellow blossoms. Their stiff stems jutted from a pinwheel of spiky leaves. The yellow blossoms were plush and flexible. The white ones were all fragile fluff that shuddered and broke apart when the wind brushed them.

Dandelions. A long stretch of dandelions sprouting up in the crags. Cinquefoil supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. The Caulkins were grassless, but nopony said anything about flowers. And of all flowers, the one that loved spitting in the face of harsh locations was the dandelion. They sprang from sidewalk cracks and cracked the asphalt like foals split sunflower seeds.

 Cinquefoil recalled several books in his library dedicated only to killing dandelions. He wasn’t sure why there was such a vendetta against them, but he knew that the weeding and poisons hadn’t worked. Not for long, at least. Dandelions just kept coming. Breaking their fluff just scattered the seeds, made them stronger. Destruction encouraged them.

The stallion ate his apple and gnawed on his seedcakes, watching the stems sway in the breeze. He sniffed the dandelion a little, then snapped up the flower in his mouth, leaves and stem and all. They were better in a proper salad, but he liked the novelty of eating them fresh. The spicy bitterness of the greens gelled quite nicely with the cakes. He smiled as the petals brushed against his cheeks.

A bit of dandelion fluff tickled his nose. Cinquefoil sneezed and set off a minor explosion of seeds. They tossed and turned in the high wind and got caught in his mane and fetlocks.

The stallion sniffed and stretched his neck for a good look around. White smoke trailed into the sky. He followed the smoke down, down, down, to a green roof on a white-bricked house. He was close enough to see the brass knocker and a red cat sleeping by the window.  

It was a short walk to Hardtack’s house. Cinquefoil grinned. It would be an even shorter run.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Hardtack chewed his pipe, squinting through his spectacles at the stallion at his doorstep. “Yeah?”

The lad’s right eye hid in a mess of sweaty mane and he panted lightly. That wasn’t too strange. He lived on the far side of the mountain and the Caulkins had their way of exhausting ponies. The few visitors he got always looked like they’d just run a marathon. But none of them _smiled_  about it.

“Hello. Topsoil sent me up to ask if you had any seeds. Tomato or grass if you have it, but I think any seeds would be fine.” He rolled the saddlebag off his shoulder and pulled out a little tin flask. “Oh, and she said you can have the last of this strawberry cordial for compensation.”

“Got some turnip bulbs an’ lemongrass. Might have some tomatoes in back.” The green stallion sniffed and looked the pony over again. “Topsoil startin’ up some kinda nudist colony?”

“No.” The pony blinked at him. “I just didn’t think it was cold or wet enough for a cloak and I didn’t have anything else to wear.”

Hardtack just harrumphed and motioned the stallion inside. “I’ll return in a moment. Don’t break nothin’.”

He returned with the seeds to find the brown stallion by the wall. He was under the seascape paintings, looking at the model schooner upon the dining table. “Is this a model of your ship? Topsoil told me you used to sail.”

“ _The Shadowed Selkie?_  Oh, if only. No, she was my great uncle’s. Mine was a fine little ship, but she wasn’t a shade this pretty. Why? D’you like her?”

The stallion smiled. “It’s very nice. But I was wondering why it—”

Hardtack flattened his ears. “Ship’s not an _it_ , son.”

“I was wondering why _she_  was named this.”

“Great Uncle Steamer thought it fit well enough. Nothing can keep a selkie from the sea forever, no matter how hard you try. Not chains, not distance, not even love. Same with ships. Same with sailors.” Hardtack studied the delicate rigging and the little canvas sails. The great mast’s reflection skimmed along the waxed deck. “Though I s’pose a plains pony wouldn’t know nothin’ of that.”

The stallion blinked slowly at him and said nothing.

Hardtack tossed the satchel over. “Hope you liked the walk over, ‘cause that’s all you’re gonna get from your trip up here. Those seeds won’t take up here. Nothin’ does.”  

“If you say so.” The brown pony put the seeds away and rolled his saddlebag back over his shoulder. “But I’m not sure if I believe that yet. Either way, thank you Hardtack.”

“Mm. You’re welcome, uh…”

“Cinquefoil.”

“You’re welcome, Cinquefoil.”

Hardtack stepped out on his porch and watched the stallion race down the mountain. The red cat mewed at him and rubbed against the sailor pony’s legs. He chewed his pipe and blew a trail of smoke.

“I swear. Nopony from the Topsoil place makes a damn lick of sense,” he told the cat. “Hmph. Cinquefoil, indeed. Name don’t match the mark at all.”


	17. The Tin Pail & the Hackberry

The rainclouds returned just before Cinquefoil did. By the time he reached Topsoil’s house, the warm stripes of sunlight waned into a yellow haze and the drizzle jerked into a downpour. Lightheart sat upon a bench at the smithy’s entrance, hooves politely tucked under her, save for the one smoothing her outfit. Now and again, the pleats of her calico skirt fluttered across the damp line in the dirt made by the dripping awning.

 The unicorn blinked slowly at the high-eared stallion approaching at a content-but-slightly-tired canter, a little dust storm billowing at his hooves. Grey-brown socks of mud and grit ran up to his hocks and his eyes were bright. She wasn’t entirely sure of his identity until he spoke.

“Hello, Lightheart.” He motioned towards the pince-nez on her nose. “I didn’t know you wore glasses.”

Lightheart pointed towards the little heap of fabric and thread beside her. “Only when I sew.” She tipped her glasses down and squinted at him. “You’re back early. Toppers said you were going to Hardtack’s. Did you forget something?”

“Oh, no, I’m finished. Just coming back from there.” He shook the saddle bag with a dry little rustle. “It’s not a long trip at all if you run.”

“You didn’t have to run.”

“I wanted to run.” The Mustangian smiled. “The sun was out, and I enjoyed the exercise. Hardtack had plenty of seeds to spare, I think we can get a lot out of them.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to interrupt, but were you always this tall?”

“Far as I can tell.”

Lightheart scratched under her chin and hummed. “Maybe ‘tis the mud or that you’ve lost that dreadful slouch, or…” She looked him over again and her eyes brightened. “Oh! Oh yes, I see now. Ha! ‘Tis no wonder you look so merry.”

Cinquefoil lifted an eyebrow, perplexed.

“Somepony’s looking for you, by the by. She says that she’s here to check Topsoil’s smithing quotas or count horseshoes or somesuch, but I don’t know who she thinks she’s fooling. However how long it takes to count horseshoes, I know it’s no more than an hour. Never thought anything could get that pegasus to sit so still for so long.” Lightheart’s giggle tinkled like glass bottles. “’T’will be an _in_ teresting spring.”

Cinquefoil tilted his head and Lightheart’s smile grew. “I don’t get it.”

The unicorn laughed again and pulled her sewing back into her lap. “You will.” She squinted, wrinkling her pretty little nose as she threaded the needle. As Cinquefoil passed her and opened the kitchen door she called over her shoulder, “Congratulations, by the way. If you’d like an interpretation, I can take a gander at it when I’m done with Top’s petticoat. ‘T’will be a bit of a wait, though.”

Cinquefoil glanced over her shoulder, wondering what that meant. Sometimes Lightheart seemed to walk her own wavelength, referencing things far outside his range of understanding and never explaining them. He shrugged and went on inside.

The indoors had a warm sugary scent that flowed over Cinquefoil’s sides like a wool blanket in winter. He dried his coat, rubbed the mud from his horseshoes, and followed the smell into the kitchen. Topsoil loomed over a counter in the far corner of the kitchen, sleeves rolled to the elbow as she kneaded little wads of dough. Flour streaked across her face and hooves, and tipped her mane white.  

Sunshower leered over a heap of scrolls, fidgeting upon a stool at the far end of a great longtable that ate most of the room. She was dressed in full armor, save for the white helmet sitting next to her. The sharpened wingblades shone in the candlelight as she moved.

Cinquefoil nodded as he passed her. “Good afternoon, Sunshower.”

The pegasus made a noncommittal grunt and kept her face toward the scrolls, but her eyes hadn’t left the stallion since the door swung open.

“Hello again, Topsoil.” He leaned contently against the longtable and dropped the satchel. “Turnips, tomatoes, and lemongrass, courtesy of Hardtack. I’m glad you asked me to go, it was a fine trip.”

A grin slunk across Topsoil’s face like an old cat. “I’ll bet it was. You’re looking much better than when you left.” She nodded approvingly. “A hale and hearty fellow, jaunty legged and sound as soil. Just as an earth pony should be. My utmost congratulations to you. It was a long time coming, I bet.”

Cinquefoil flicked his ears, smiling at the sentiment but still quite confused. “Thank you, but what am I being congratulated on?”

Sunshower looked up from the scrolls and looked him over. “Are you making a joke? If this is some Mustangian witticism of yours, then I do not get it.”

Cinquefoil stared back addle-eyed.

 “You do not mean to tell us that you have not noticed?” Her mouth fixed in a tight little frown determined to not turn into a smile. Sunshower shook her head at him. “Look at your flank, you blind, silly pony.”

He turned his head and blinked at the mark etched upon his fur: a spray of five dandelions bending in the breeze, their yellowing leaves tossing in all directions. White seeds curled up and outwards in a pretty little spiral that rolled with his muscles. At a glance, the seeds looked very much like ashes, Cinquefoil thought. The idea made him smile, though he wasn’t sure why. The other flank was marked the same way.

Cinquefoil couldn’t tell if it was etched upon his coat like a dye or if the mark went deeper, like a brand. He wondered if it would still be there if he didn’t have fur.

“Oh, that. Yes, I noticed that on my way back from Hardtack’s. I was wondering what it was but it didn’t seem harmful, so I didn’t worry about it. I like the way the white bits go with my hooves.” He blinked at the mares staring at him. “Why? Do you know what it is? Is it supposed to do something?” Cinquefoil frowned at the bafflement on their faces. “Is there something wrong with it?”

“Of course there is nothing wrong with it!” Sunshower snapped. “And never in your life allow anypony to tell you different. Not ever.”

Cinquefoil stamped in frustration. “Fine, fine, but what _is_  it?”

“That is your mark,” Sunshower slowly said, still wary this was some sort of joke. Or worse, that he was serious. “It is your talent. Your gifted skill.”

“Your reason to be,” said Topsoil.

“It is your core.”

“Your passions.”

“Your mark is _you_ ,” both mares said together.    

The stallion chuckled lightly. “It doesn’t look much like me.”

The pegasus rolled her eyes. “Fine, then it is a symbol of you. It is as I said, the core of what makes you yourself. What you are best at, what makes you happy. How broken are you to not know this?” She frowned, her eyes softened but her voice stayed stately. “Were you never happy before?”

“Of course I was. Maybe I haven’t been lately, but I was. I was very happy.”

The dough at Topsoil’s hooves bubbled. She watched it slowly rise up and up, adding a bit more oatmeal every few seconds, then trampled the dough back down. “Surely you’ve noticed the mark on the flanks of other ponies? Even if your memory’s foggy, your eyes work fine.”

“I didn’t think it was very polite to ask.” Cinquefoil shrugged. “And the subject never came up.”

In truth, he’d been curious about the odd little pictures sketched on the ponies’ sides for a long time. In the dense fog of his head he remembered wondering about it long before he came to the Caulkins. But everypony else seemed to know what he did not and thus did not question it. To question it when nobody else did made him feel unlearned and foalish

Cinquefoil pointed at the green grass shoots on Topsoil’s flank. “So, what is your talent? Grass growing?”

The farrier molded the dough into twelve little rolls and leaned towards the back of the room to check on the oven. “Grass does most of the growing itself. Just like a foal, grass’ll grow fine all on its own, but needs a little help to keep growing strong. I know how to keep lawns lush and soft, sod healthy and fertile. But yes, it’s grass growing. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Lightheart’s, but hers… well, it’s in her name. A little heart on wings because she’s light of heart. I never knew her to be sad for more than an hour.” Topsoil smiled ruefully. “Even if she doesn’t smile quite as often in the Caulkins.

The oatcakes slid into the oven and Topsoil came to join them at the longtable. “Anyhow, most ponies get their mark in foalhood and go into apprenticeship soon after. That’s how it is in the Earth Pony Nation, and I understand it’s much the same for unicorns in their Kingdom. I don’t know what it’s like for the pegasus tribe.”

The two earth ponies looked at Sunshower expectantly.

Sunshower shifted on the bench, unused to the obligation to contribute to a conversation. “Yarak has told me that the pegasus ponies shift from trade to trade before a mark is found so that the opportunity to discover a passion is not lost. After that, a pony will go into the rank where they belong. It is not dissimilar from an apprenticeship, I think, but you have many teachers instead of one. Pegasi keen in myth or playwriting go to the halls of Paradise. The navigators and the cartographers and wind scholars, to the halls of North Star. The stealthy study with The Masquerade and talented fliers join the Whizzer Cavalry or Lofty Rank. All pegasi can fight, of course, but the exceptionally bold and fierce leave to train at Butterfly Isle.”

Sunshower’s eyes were not on the table but the round window that peeped just behind Cinquefoil’s head and the red sunset in rainclouds. “Lesser minds and weaker hearts call Butterfly Island brutal. I do not think that is untrue. Foals take on training that Lofty Rank does not teach until adulthood. I have heard Butterfly Isle is full of the crash of rainbow falls and the crack of bones. The walls of the caverns wave with many colors and at sunset the black sand glints like a knife.”

“It isn’t in clouds?” asked Topsoil.

“There are more places a pony will have to fight than the clouds. The sooner a pony gets used to solid ground, the better. When their training is over, some sleep in the clouds floating above the rainbow falls. But not many. They do not want to leave their comrades. Butterfly Island is a proud place where colts and fillies preen with every bruise they earn. In no other place is a pegasus so tested. Or so loved. That is as I have heard it.”

She brought her eyes down to Cinquefoil, who blinked neutrally at her and offered a smile. She did not smile back. “I have never been. I do not know what the homeland is like now. It has been an exceptional length of time since the last time my father flew there.”

Cinquefoil found an unoccupied bench at the table corner and settled there, his forehooves splayed awkwardly in front of him. He still didn’t know what to do with his hooves when he sat. “Are marks how you choose matrons?”

“Sometimes.” Sunshower shuffled her wings. “It depends. There are scholars in Paradise Hall that follow Lofty and many warriors on Butterfly Island that follow Surprise.”

“What about ponies of Wind Whistler?”

“They are everywhere. There is never an inappropriate place for logic and reason.” She flicked her tail and sighed. “We have come off topic. The question here is one of marks and—”

The Mustangian pricked his ears. “What’s yours, Sunshower?”

The pegasus glanced at the milky armor covering her flank. “Mine?”

“You’re the only Sunshower here.”

Sunshower lashed her tail, ready to tell the Mustangian to mind his own business. Then Cinquefoil twitched his soft brown ears and smiled at her. It was a quiet expression not meant for her or anypony else, small and warm and happy for the sake of itself. It suited him well.  

So instead, she told him, “It is nothing remarkable. It is simply the sun overtaking rainclouds. Or rainclouds covering the sun; it depends on how one views it. It is for keeping the order of the sky, to assure that things are in their proper place. There is a time for sunshine, there is a time for clouds, and there is a time for both. I received it upon the cessation of a minor flood.”

Sunshower inclined a hoof towards Cinquefoil. “What does yours mean?”

The stallion shrugged.

“Well, what were you doing when it happened?” asked Topsoil. “How did you feel?”

“I don’t know when it came. I just know that I didn’t have it when I set out, nor did I have it when the feral dogs were upon me. I didn’t see it until I stopped to rest on my way back down.”

Sunshower pricked her ears and frowned at the mention of the dogs.  

“As for what I was doing, it wasn’t much. I strolled along the mountain, picked up the seeds, ate lunch and ran. I’m very fast, I discovered.”

Topsoil chuckled. “Wake the town crier, the Mustangian’s fast. Meanwhile, the pegasus can fly and frogs can hop.”

“But,” said Cinquefoil, “I don’t know what any of that that has to do with dandelions. I ate some for lunch, but that’s all.”  

Sunshower tapped her hooves, patting out a marching tune upon the table. “It could still be a talent for running and it means that you are swift as the wind. And it is a flower because…earth ponies are of the earth. Or something like that.”

“The seeds are blowing,” Topsoil observed. “And the only reason you were there in the first place was to help my garden. It could be for cultivation. Did you feel a particular way while you were up there? Happy? At peace?”

“No.” The window behind Cinquefoil was a dusky indigo, the last bits of sunlight pinched at his shoulders as it faded. He rolled a salt shaker from hoof to hoof as he thought. “Something other than happiness, I think. I was glad for the exercise and a pleasant lunch, but more than that I felt... I don’t know. I felt like the person I was before I set hoof in the mountains.” His quiet smile blossomed into a grin. “Unshaken, though I am always shaking. Unfettered and... new. Dauntless, in spite of myself. I’d missed it.”

Cinquefoil was quiet for a time, listening to the drip of the water clock. “I felt like myself,” he finally said.

Topsoil nodded approvingly. “That’s fine to hear, son. But more important, there’s a thing you’re good at. Listen, we’re not much in the way of speed in these lands. Ponies are spread out wider than a taxmare’s purse and they go at a sleepy pace.”

She gestured toward the high, curving claws of the mining mountains. “Everypony’s too busy working or tending their kin to worry about sending messages along. News coming from the peaks to the houses takes half the day, if not longer. Did you see the great fuss yesterday?”

“I saw the mass of ponies,” said Cinquefoil. “I didn’t hear anything of it, save for a word now and then from somepony with a shrill voice.”

“The Empire’s envoy arrived weeks ahead of schedule.” Sunshower pulled her helmet close, running her hoof down the curve of the champron. “First snowfall was uncharacteristically early.”  

“Hm, indeed. There was a grand fuss over it, sensible ponies stirring themselves into a fit from surprise and hearsay. If somepony had just warned the miners ahead of time and told the rock farmers to prepare their materials, all of it could have been avoided.”

Cinquefoil saw where this road led. “You need a courier pony.”

Topsoil nodded. “Badly. Had you any trouble coming through the mountains? Bad footing? Slips on the rocks?”

“Smooth gallop all the way.”

“Perhaps in the outer mountains, but the inner peaks are not the same. It is a long fall from the mining mountains. It is a sharp and jagged place, shorter but steeper than Sill. The miners move slowly for a reason.” Sunshower lowered her brow, lips pursed into a frown that sent wrinkles along her young face. “I do not think ponies without wings are meant to climb that high. Where would you be if your hoof slipped at such a height? In a heap of rock and shattered bones with your legs bent in all the wrong directions, that is where. Why do earth ponies insist upon being so irrational?”

Topsoil waved her off. “Oh, come. Ponies are up and down those mountains all day and I’ve never seen harm come from it, not even with the foals. It’s a little dangerous, certainly, but not a death trap.”

“And you would know? You are a blacksmith at the foot of Sill and been here less than a year. I was born in these peaks. There are landslides. There are lightning strikes. There are pitfalls and pit vipers.”

“Why, Miss Sunshower. I never knew you were so concerned with the wellbeing of us humble earth ponies.” Topsoil rested her chin on her hooves and smiled dryly.

The pegasus flattened her ears. “I have never approved of foolhardiness.”

“I know how to watch my step,” Cinquefoil put in. “There’s a safe path up there somewhere, I’m sure. It’s just a matter of getting used to it. I appreciate the concern, though.”

Sunshower flattened her ears lower and lashed her tail. She refocused on polishing her helmet, unintelligible mutterings rolling over her tongue.

Topsoil rose from the table and peeked into the oven to check on the oatcakes. “So, would you like me to speak to the townsponies about it?”

Cinquefoil couldn’t object to a job that kept him out and running. The less time indoors alone with his own thoughts, the better. “But being a courier doesn’t seem related to my mark.”

“It’s not.” Topsoil eased the oven open and sprinkled the cakes with cinnamon. “But the truth is, almost nopony keeps to their mark in these parts.”

All three ponies pricked their ears at the creaking door and the jingling of bells.

Heartstrings and Star Swirl stood together in the foyer, both of them with dusty coats and tired smiles. Cinquefoil nodded to them and Heartstrings’ smile widened as she waved back. Star Swirl raised a hoof in greeting, but his eyes were unsettled and focused. The stargazed adjusted his cape, peering warily at Sunshower, still busy polishing her helmet. The unicorns joined the others at the longtable, Heartstrings sitting next to Cinquefoil and Star Swirl standing behind as he fiddled with his beard and muttered to himself.

“Hi.” A bit of discomfort gnawed at Cinquefoil’s chest. He shook the feeling off and leaned against the table to get distance between himself and the stargazer’s horn. “Where have you two been all day?” He lightly tapped the soft bulge in Heartstrings’ saddlebag. “On a scavenger hunt?”

Star Swirl snapped out of his own thoughts and looked at him. “Wait, what? Why would we be hunting scavengers?”

Heartstrings hummed as she wrung the rainwater out of her tail. “Well, since there was no need t’be working today, we thought we’d be goin’ out for a nice, long walk. I helped Star Swirl take a gander at all the wee rocks and birds and things for his studies. Mount Sill’s quite a place when you get up… there.”

The old minstrel trailed off when she saw Star Swirl snap his eyes away from the table. The stallion took a step back, then another. The dark rings under his eyes sagged like a doomed convict, ears tall and shaking, his jaw set rigid and grim. Star Swirl cleared his throat and adjusted his cape again. He flicked his eye at her, then down, then at her again.

Heartstrings followed his gaze down to Cinquefoil’s flank. Her smile vanished. “You got your mark.” The whisper was so soft the room hardly heard. She put a hoof against her chest and looked to Star Swirl, but Star Swirl was already thundering up the stairs in a clash of bells and determined hoofbeats.

“I did! It—” Cinquefoil ducked to make room for Star Swirl as he passed. “It’s a dandelion.”

“So I see...”

“I don’t exactly know what it’s for yet. Not exactly. Do you have any ideas?”

“Uh. No, I… I’m afraid that I don’t.” The smile struggling across her face fell short of her eyes. “Congratulations, lad. I’m glad for ye.” She took a long, quavering breath. When she spoke again, her voice was a pitch too merry, bright and brittle as thin ice in morning light. “So! How was your day, then? Did ye have a good time? Ye look in…” Another pause. “Ye look t’be in fine spirits.”

“I did and I am. I went out on an errand and discovered I’m fairly fast. Topsoil tells me I can earn my keep as a courier.” Cinquefoil frowned and leaned in closer. “Heartstrings?”  

“Aye?”

“Are you alright? You look unsettled.” He glanced toward the stairwell where Star Swirl vanished. He’d never seen the unicorn move that fast without Lightheart on his tail, nor had he ever seen him so alarmed. “Is anything wrong?”

“Oh. Oh, no, I’m right as rain, ‘tis no need t’be losing sleep for my sake. I’m just a wee bit tired. I’m an old mare and Sill’s a steep mount.” She licked a dry corner of her mouth. “I think… I think that I may go on up to bed early.”

Topsoil’s head popped up from the oven. “But you’ll miss dinner! ‘Tis a pepper and parsley pot pie with a side of oatcakes. I thought it was your favorite.”

“It is. But I really am feeling tired. Later, maybe.” Heartstrings gently slung her bag over her shoulder and pushed away from the table.

Cinquefoil rose and followed her out of the kitchen. “I could save you some and bring it up later?”

“Thank you, you’re a sweet lad.” Heartstrings turned with a sigh and took a long look at Cinquefoil’s concerned face. “Oh. C’mere a moment.” She wrapped a hoof around his shoulder and pulled him close. She nuzzled his shoulder, her face buried in his mane.

“Heartstrings?”

Her grip tightened and her shoulders lightly trembled. “Congratulations again.”

Cinquefoil trailed behind her. He stood at the bottom of the stairwell and watched her slow ascend until she turned the corner and vanished.

“It is likely as she says,” said Topsoil’s voice from the kitchen.

“Indeed,” agreed Sunshower. “Sill is a mighty climb, it would tire out anypony.”

Cinquefoil flicked his tail and didn’t say anything. He reached back and felt the damp spot on his shoulder.

 

* * *

 

December came on fast and muggy. The air was warm and thick and showered the Caulkins with sleet in the evenings, hail in the mornings, and occasional diamond dust in the afternoon if a pony looked close enough. Cinquefoil ran on through all of it, scrolls in his saddlebag and green cloak flaring out behind him. If the sun was up then so was he. If not running messages, then he was tending to Topsoil’s little garden under the living room windows or galloping through the mountain range to shake off the doldrums.

In the evenings he returned too late to share dinner with Heartstrings, Lightheart and Topsoil (Star Swirl had retired to his room and not been seen since) and by the time he’d hung his cloak,  the house shifted into a tavern. There was always a warm meal waiting for him, but the lack of company left him cold. Topsoil and Heartstrings were busy working and Lightheart hid upstairs when the rock farmers and miners trailed in.

The locals still gave him an odd look here or there, but the distrustful stares had all but vanished. They welcomed him into their conversations and sometimes tried to wave him over from his far corner of the kitchen. Cinquefoil joined them once or twice for politeness’ sake, but didn’t care for speaking to these earth ponies with whom he shared a tribe but did not know. Ponies in large numbers brought back that tightness in his skin and pulled the walls in close.

When the moon rose high, the lushes loomed over their ciders and cordials and bad wine and called Heartstrings to play the ballads of a sweet place. Someplace they’d come from or someplace they were going, someplace they loved and was not here. They rocked their heads and sang softly into their glasses, slurring lyrics and pungent with homesickness. Cinquefoil knew the feeling. He knew a song or two of his own, but he barely grasped the tune, couldn’t remember any of the words, and nopony could help him remember, for nopony knew of a place called San Francisco or New York. Not even Hardtack, who’d sailed almost everywhere. No, Cinquefoil didn’t enjoy dinner in the tavern at all.

But he couldn’t stand eating alone in the close quarters of his room and eating on the stairs made him feel silly. So, he ate in the smithy by light of the moon and the little window in the door. He decided he liked it better here anyway; it was quiet and he could look out into the mountains, listening to the rain and crickets as he ate his stew in the company of himself until it was time for bed.

It was on one of these early December nights that Sunshower found him. She flew by the smithy, only to double back at the sight of somepony moving in the shadows. The pegasus landed in the lower rafters, peering down at him. Cinquefoil couldn’t read her face in the dark and her voice was neutral as she asked, “Why are you eating all alone in the dark?”

“Because,” said Cinquefoil, “the sun went down, I don’t have a candle, my friends are working, and I’m hungry.”

“Why do you not want to be with your own kind? Do you dislike them? Are the miners quarrelsome?”

Cinquefoil flinched at the steaming broth and gently blew across the bowl. “They aren’t my kind.” Even as he said it, he knew that was not the right thing to say. He also knew it that it was true and felt too tired to lie. “They’re earth ponies but they’re none of mine. I don’t think I have a kind.”

“Nonsense, everything has a kind. What of your roots? What of the herd your unshaved unicorn friend spoke of?” Sunshower froze, realizing what she’d said. “I apologize. I did not intend to speak of your loss so casual—”

“There was no herd.” The stallion took a sip of his stew and swished his tail. “Star Swirl didn’t tell you true, but I can’t tell you either. There is a lot I don’t remember, but I know I never had a herd. I have no roots.”

“Untrue.” Sunshower dipped lower so that Cinquefoil could see the flinty green of her eyes. “Despite the name, earth ponies do not simply spring from earth. You cannot recall your kin, but this does not mean you have no kindred. I cannot recall being born, but this does not disprove my birth.”

The pegasus clucked her tongue and swished away the notion with her right wing. "Of course you have roots. You have simply been uprooted is all.”

Cinquefoil was unconvinced, but the light certainty of her voice lifted his drooped ears. "I suppose it’s a nice enough thought, though I don't see what makes you so sure." He gave her a flat look and a caustic smile. "I suppose you'll tell me it's in my wistful eyes?"

Sunshower returned the look twofold. “Actually, no. I will not deny that you have an…unusual character to your eyes, but no. It is in your gait. Even when you are terrified in the dead of night, every step is steadfast. You walk upon the earth not as if you live upon it, not as if you share it, but own it. You leave flags instead of footprints. I have never seen anypony of any tribe move in such a way. Cinquefoil, I do not speak untruths. No creature can move the way you do and have no roots.” She tossed her mane over her shoulder and snorted. “And I will hear no different. Persist in arguing this point and I shall be forced to kick your head until it works properly.”

Cinquefoil swallowed a mouthful of stew and lifted his head, broth dripping from the little hairs on his chin. “Well, I like to avoid head trauma when I can. Do you always threaten ponies to make them feel better?”

“Only when they are being stubborn. Your dinner is dripping off of your face.”

He tilted his head and squinted to look. “So it is.” He shook it off and dipped his muzzle back into the stew.

Sunshower fluttered above his head and watched him. “I do not like that you are eating all alone in the dark.” She flipped her tail one way, than another, then back again. She quietly added, “I could fetch you a lantern if you like.”

Cinquefoil studied her silhouette in the dim light as he chewed a dinner roll. There wasn’t much point, there was only a third of dinner left to eat at the most. He swallowed the roll, smiled, and said, “A lantern would be very nice.” He put the stew aside for a moment and waited politely.

The waning moon was just peeking over Sill when Sunshower flew back into the smithy, lantern in hoof and a tin pail in her teeth. She perched upon a nearby workbench and blinked at him. The pail squeaked as it swung from her jaws, filled with roasted corn, saltgrass, and a bright green apple.

The stallion peered at Sunshower’s small dinner, blinked back up at her, and smiled. He went back to his stew without a word.

Sunshower relaxed her shoulders and bit into her corn.

He licked up the spare carrots and potatoes stuck to the bottom of his bowl and bit a chunk from another rye roll. She savored the juices in her apple and nibbled saltgrass. He sipped his cup of water.

Together they listened to the churn of voices lift and fall within the tavern. When the voices plunged into that valley of silence that always falls upon a crowd, they heard the muffled pluck of Heartstrings’ lyre. They caught the last notes of _The King’s Daughter_ and the opening ones of _Our Own Dozing Land_ before the patrons’ voices snuffed them out again.

Finally, there was nothing left of dinner. Cinquefoil jumped up on the work bench next to Sunshower and sighed the contented sigh of a full stomach. The pegasus fluttered her wings in surprise, but said nothing. The white sliver of moon vanished behind one of Sill’s many clouds as the wind picked up. An abandoned barrel rocked in the wind and collected rainwater. The air had a bitter little chill to it and blew the smell of Topsoil’s sooty workshop in their coats.

Cinquefoil looked to his companion, who watched him from the side of her eye.

“It is my opinion,” said Sunshower, “that it is better to take meals in the company of others than to eat by one’s self. It can be lonely. By one’s self, I mean.”

“It can be,” the Mustangian agreed. “Did you like your dinner?”

“The corn was overdone and blackened on the ends, the saltgrass was too strong, and the apple did not complement the meal at all. But I suppose I liked it. Did you enjoy your ugly collage of tubers and broth?”  

“I did.”

“That is good to hear.” Sunshower rubbed the soot from her hooves. “I do not enjoy the thought of you eating all alone.”

“The same way you don’t like me running down dangerous mountains or being afraid?”

“It…” She wrapped her tail around her hooves and stared at her shadow stretching on the walls. Her feathers flared and fell. Sunshower stared up at Sill and over it into the vast eastern sky. “It is not dissimilar.” Before the comfortable silence had a chance to turn awkward she asked, “Are you still having troublesome dreams?”

“Constantly.” Cinquefoil sighed. “And often worse than before. But these days they stay in their place and don’t follow me after I wake up. That’s an improvement at least.”

The Mustangian leaned back on the bench in the most bizarre way. His back stretched upwards as his back legs dangled and his front hooves gripped the side of the bench. He appeared comfortable, though the contorted position looked anything but.

“If you don’t mind my asking, do you often eat dinner alone, Sunshower?”

The mare sighed. “Father joins me sometimes. Once or thrice in autumn. Perhaps once in midsummer, when the winds are low. Rarely more than that.”

“I was thinking.” Cinquefoil put his weight on his forehooves as he leaned forward into the night. “Instead of having lonely dinners at opposite ends of the mountain, what if we join our meals all the time and we can be lonely together instead?”

Sunshower rolled her eyes. “That is a contradiction of terms. How can we be together and lonely? You should learn to speak more precisely.”

“You’ve never felt lonely even when you weren’t alone?”

“That has no bearing on the situation you propose. I am not lonely in your company and therefore we cannot be lonely together. We are either lonely or we are together. It is a contradiction of terms still.” The sea-green of her tail gleamed in the lantern light as it swished. “This said, ignoring your irritating penchant for imprecise language, I am not averse to the idea.”

Sunshower gave him a warm side glance, then looked back out into the evening. Cinquefoil leaned back on the bench and closed his eyes. He felt the bite of sleet on his coat and listened to the low chorus behind the door.

Together, they smiled.

 

* * *

 

He didn’t know why he knocked. He hadn’t expected him to open his door. He hadn’t answered the door for him in over a month and he always seemed to know it was him without opening. So when Cinquefoil opened the door, Star Swirl had no plan, no idea what to do or say. So he said the first thing that came to mind.

“I’m sorry.” Star Swirl’s mane fizzed in tangled pink clouds and his eyes sank into his skull. His beard dangled in a limp corkscrew, his coat dull and unbrushed. He smelled distinctly of iron and ink. The unicorn leaned against the doorway was if it was the only thing propping him up. “I really am. Know that I’m still trying my very best and am closer than I was before.”

“Hmm?” Cinquefoil slowly blinked at him, his face half hidden by uncombed curls. He opened the door wider and yawned confusedly. “Sorry for what?”

Star Swirl just stared back at him miserably.

“It’s…” The earth pony squinted at the moon and pulled his blanket over his shoulder. “It’s the middle of the night. You should go back to bed.”

“Feh, what use have I for sleep? I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Listen, I know ‘tis barely past midnight, but I just felt I had to tell you that before…” Star Swirl sighed and leaned on his haunches. “I know I’m not often around these days, and I know you’re not much for my compn’y. I just wanted you to know I’ve not forgotten you. I think I might know where they are, but I’m not sure yet how to get them out. I know ‘might’ isn’t much, but I thought I should let you know.”

“Mmhm. ‘Sgood to hear.” Cinquefoil yawned again and closed his eyes. “Hey, Star Swirl?”

“Yes?” The unicorn’s tired eyes widened.

“I really need to get back to sleep. Empire’s coming back tomorrow and I need to wake up early. I’m gonna be needed.” The stallion smiled sleepily as he turned and wandered back to his heap of blankets in the corner.“And then I’m meeting Sunshower for lunch.”

Star Swirl twitched his ears to assure they worked correctly. “Not General Yarak’s daughter Sunshower? The one who glares from Sill, full of spite and suspicion? I thought she hated you.”

“If she does, she hides it well.” Cinquefoil opened his eyes again and looked up. “You should get some sleep, you look awful. You really don’t need to worry for me so much. I know at night I’ll still have one of my turns, but I really feel fine. Better than I have in weeks.”

“I’ve noticed.” Star Swirl tried to smile politely or say that he was glad the little pony was happy or to wish him well. But he could not.

Not while he still remembered the scratch of fingernails behind his ears and a book with browning pages with pictures printed, not painted. Not when he could still sense that hole in the universe, hidden under hooves and pony coat, but not gone. Not when they’d come so far, the other humans so close.

He glanced at the flower seeds twirling on the flank of the Mustangian who was not Mustangian. Dandelions flourished in countless places. Vases were not one of them.

Star Swirl ran his tongue over his scarred lips and laid his ears back. _I opened one cage. I can open another._

“Again, I am sorry. I never predicted something like this would happen. If I had, I’d…”  The unicorn rubbed his neck. He’d have what? Stand back and watch the Roc take the human to his doom? Star Swirl knew himself better than that. Knowing what he knew now, in the end he’d have still done it. Hesitated, probably. Regretted it, certainly. But done it all the same.

It didn’t matter. Cinquefoil was already asleep before Star Swirl finished speaking. He quietly nudged the door shut and took up his lantern for another long night of research. He’d sleep in the morning. Star Swirl gathered up his quills and inks, carefully folded up his notes, and arranged them into his saddlebag. He adjusted his thin cape best he could, assured his bells were tightly fastened, and went into the night.

It was an ill night to scale Mount Sill (or the Volcano of Gloom, depending on one’s outlook) but what night wasn’t? He knew the peak well enough by now to climb without the aid of fair daylight. More importantly, night was the only time he knew for certain the general and the Roc would not be watching for him.

Star Swirl was more of a night pony anyhow. The wide, quiet dark of the new moon sky soothed his anxious heart and the occasional spray of stars siphoned his scattered thoughts. Not entirely, but enough.

The lower parts of Sill had been exhausted and explored weeks ago. He gripped the lantern and made a beeline for the top, only slowing as he reached the high caves that pockmarked the mountainside. Most of the caverns were little indents in the rock that went no more than a few yards, but others leaned in deeper, perhaps into the heart of the mount. The pegasi lived somewhere in these caves, but Star Swirl had no way of knowing which cave it was, nor was he eager to find out. The pegasus tribe was not famed for forgiveness and he personally preferred his throat unslit. The unicorn frowned and poked his horn into the misty cloud. Still, he’d have to look eventually. If Cinquefoil was truly on good terms with the yellow mare, then perhaps he could find some way in.

He lifted the lantern high and strained his eyes. Star Swirl was in the full thick of the cloud now. Moisture beaded on his horn as the cumulus billowed and swirled, thick as brandy milk. The wind whistled through his mane and sent his cape flapping wildly at his shoulders. Blinded by the clouds and battered by the gale, Star Swirl braced himself amongst the rocks. It became difficult to breathe. The air howled and moaned and cut itself on the crags.

And then, he heard it.

Star Swirl's ear swiveled. There it was again. The quiet sound he caught but for a moment in his first trek up Sill. It’d been there and gone so quickly he’d presumed it some trick of the wind or his own imagination.  

A quiet counterpoint in the squall, an underscore to the breeze that was not the breeze. An arrangement steady and strong, a pattern of notes long and low swirling in the thick mass of cloud. Not sophisticated to the point of melody, but not so chaotic as to simply be noise. Star Swirl leaned as far over the mountainside as he was able without being blown over. His ears battered in the wind as they strained to filter out the mystery sound. He listened not to the shriek of gales, but between them, to the notes not being played.

Yes. Yes, now he was sure of it.

Voices. Voices caught in the clouds, winding in and out of the Sill’s high caverns as air moves through a flute. Perhaps one or two. Perhaps forty. Perhaps forty thousand. All joined together in one wordless vocalization.

And gone again, quickly as it’d come.

The little unicorn sat and stared into the clouds. “Oh. Oh, stars,” was all that he said.

 

* * *

 

Fifteen days and ten shared dinners after their first visit, the Empire’s envoys returned. The supply of metals and ores stacked high as houses, with more crates added by the second.

Cinquefoil roused before dawn, spurred by some nameless nightmare that vanished before he opened his eyes. He curried his coat, combed his tail, then made and ate a light breakfast before Topsoil came downstairs. Together they made light work double-checking the supply of horseshoes and wingblades for errors, watering the tomatoes, and sweeping the smithy.

Midmorning had him running messages from one end of the Caulkins to the other, top to bottom and left to right. The rock farmers needed help from the miners getting the granite moving, for they were short on workers due to a sudden colic outbreak, and all fifteen members of the Sheer Shale clan put up a fuss about the Empire’s poor scheduling, but that was the extent of the day’s problems. All things considered, it was a slow morning. The earth ponies of the Caulkins, like earth ponies of most places, were thorough and well prepared, despite the grumbling. It was a rush of triple-checks and fuss from peak to peak, but by late morning everypony was already trudging back home for business as usual.

Cinquefoil trotted among the miners looking for work until the annoyed glances made it clear his services were not needed. It was still some hours before lunchtime, however, and the Mustangian itched for something to do. The indoor garden was watered and tilled, it was too crowded to go for a run, Topsoil was working, Star Swirl was finally sleeping, and Heartstrings… well, Heartstrings was awake but she hadn’t been in the mood for talking lately.

He leaned against the leaf-bare hackberry tree and watched the Empire arrive. They were close enough for him to make out all eight mares; two white, one violet, one blue and three whose coats and faces were concealed by dark mirrored armor. The eighth, a yellow mare in white armor buzzing at the edge of the formation. Cinquefoil hoped Sunshower remembered to oil her wingblades like she meant to. Last night she’d complained her wingblades squeaked whenever she flapped too fast. The blue mare next to her swished her braided tail and let out a piercing whistle.

The other envoys drifted to the ground and busied themselves with the carts, leaving the blue mare and Sunshower in the air. Sunshower’s legs waved uncertainly beneath her as she turned her head towards him. Cinquefoil didn’t know if she was looking at him or just in his direction, but all the same he lifted a forehoof and smiled. Sunshower quickly looked back at the visiting pegasi. He thought he heard a voice spike in anger or anxiety, but they were too far off to know for sure.

He was still squinting to purse out what was happening when a grey blur darted under his legs. A nasty little collection of fur and teeth and snarling and squealing around his hooves. Cinquefoil spooked, his back legs kicking out on instinct. In the moment he realized the terrier was only after a rat a crack of wood split the air and the hackberry moaned.

The stallion backed away moments before the trunk snapped and the tree crashed against the rock. He gawked at the splinters and broken branches at his feet. He looked at the thick, hardy trunk, then at his back hoof, and back to the tree.

He was still staring when Topsoil stormed from the smithy, the hammer in her teeth still hot. She’d the doomful stride of a mother too socially conscious to scold a child in public. She spat out the hammer and tugged Cinquefoil away from the tree.

Ears and lips flat, Topsoil hissed, ”Are you _mad_? Just what on earth d’you think you’re doing? I—” She glanced cautiously up towards the pegasi, then back towards the house.

Lightheart leaned out the kitchen window, frowning. “What happened? I heard a crash.”

“‘Tis nothing, love. Wind just blew down this rotted tree, never you mind.” Topsoil waited until the shutters closed, then gritted her teeth. “Blackrot and fireblight, colt! Do you not see the Pegasus Empire floating _right there_?”

Cinquefoil’s ears drooped. He’d never seen Topsoil in such a state before. “I… Of course I do, but..”

“But what?”

“But why does that matter? Was it an important tree?” He twitched his tail sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to knock the tree down. Cotterpin’s terrier startled me and I don’t get on well with dogs. I didn’t know that I could…” Cinquefoil looked back at the felled hackberry and slowly brought his ears up. “...That tree wasn’t rotten at all.”

“No. It wasn’t.”

“But I didn’t even kick that hard.”

“I expect you didn’t, no.” Topsoil’s face softened with her sigh. “But no great harm done, I think. The pegasi were too busy to notice, thank our merry luck for that.” She sat back on her haunches and rubbed her temples. “You truly didn’t know you could buck like that? Or are you telling me a tale?”

Cinquefoil shook his head. “Can you kick like that?”

Topsoil nudged the broken branches into a pile off to the side. “Of course. And much harder than that. So can Hardtack. So can the Shales. We all can. But your legs are more for sprinting than sparring, and in your condition I guess I can understand why you wouldn’t know…” She sighed again. “Listen: there are things the earth pony tribe keep to themselves. _Only_  themselves.”

“So I can’t tell—”

“Absolutely not. Anypony you could tell knows already and those that don’t, well. They don’t need to.”

“But I think I can trust—”

“I’m sure you can. I’m no tribalist, I’ve no quarrel with friends or lovers outside your own kind, you know that. There’s not a pony in all the world I love or trust more than my Lightheart. But it’s better she not know so that if somepony asks her of it, she can claim ignorance honestly. Nopony that’s not of the earth knows and it’s best kept that way in case…”  

Topsoil twitched her ears and flicked her eyes up towards the gleaming armor and whetted wingblades. “Well. Just in case.”

The earth ponies stood for a few moments, silent air and fallen branches between them.

“Do you understand me?” the farrier whispered.

Cinquefoil studied the bits of wood pulp smashed in his shoe. He recalled a tense moment between well-dressed unicorns and the Conemarans they refused to acknowledge, the nervous rush to have the ores well in order before the Empire arrived. The three tribes worked together, but only one had to answer to two others.

He looked to the skies above him where the envoys pulled back into the air. The blue mare with the braided tail caught his gaze. Even from this distance he felt her disdain for little wingless, hornless ponies with no way to defend themselves. As far as she knew.

“Yeah, I understand.”  

“Good. Try and reign yourself in the future.” Topsoil smiled lightly. “Wouldn’t do to have you kicking holes in my house. I arranged the basket for your lunch. I didn’t know how you wanted the salad, so that part’ll be up to you. But I suggest you wait and give some time for your friend to finish up with the envoys.

“Alright,” said Cinquefoil. “Do we have any watercress left?”

 

* * *

 

Thistle Whistle nodded. “Yes. Yes, this is much better. It is a satisfactory stock, Sunshower. Though I am surprised at the surplus of battle-boots.” She gave a lopsided grin. “Since when is a mare of Wind Whistler imprecise?”

Sunshower’s neutral expression tightened. _Since when is a mare of Lofty so absentminded she doesn’t realize she’s a month early?_ “The earth ponies insisted on it. They did not like being caught unprepared and the battle-boots were lacking last year and they mediated it thusly. It is a gesture of goodwill.”

“Overstock of normal horseshoes would be better,” Thistle Whistle humphed. “Not much to be done with fighting shoes.”

General Yarak looked up from his conversation with an armored envoy. He made no move toward them and his tone of voice never changed, but Sunshower felt the disapproval in their sisters through her barding.

“Has Commander Maelstrom elected to move more soldiers into cloud duty?”

“Not quite yet. The Senate debates it, though it is not much of a debate. Pegasi under the wings of Masquerade, Surprise, and Heart Throb lose feathers as they rail against it, but their molt is for naught if you ask me. Representatives of Lofty, North Star, Medley, Wind Whistler, and Paradise are all either for it or turning that way.” Thistle Whistle shrugged her thin shoulders. “It’s just not logical to keep our forces full in peacetime.”

Sunshower turned up her nose with a snort. “Paradise, indeed! What do playwrights and songsmiths know of soldiering? And the Medleys were always a flock of frightened fledglings, anyway. What do the representatives of Firefly say?”

“They say nothing and don’t care either way. You are just cross because your fellows are not on your side.”

Thistle Whistle sighed at Sunshower’s rumpled mood and offered her a sympathetic smile. “Little sister, know that I love you as I love all our sisters. But you must understand it has been many a decade since the war.” She at least had the decency to lower her voice to a respectful volume and her eye away from Yarak. “Times have moved on, regardless of an old warhorse’s affections.”

Sunshower’s jaw clamped tight. _Time and place for emotional expression. Time and place._ “Age brings wisdom, Thistle Whistle.”

“And youth bears insight. But I admit I am surprised, I have never known those of North Star and Lofty to agree on anything.” Thistle Whistle’s laugh was bright and sharp. “If the ponies of Wind Whistler and Heart Throb came to agreement, now _that_  would be a sight. We can expect ice cream falling from bubblegum clouds and clever earth ponies next.”

The envoy blew a red hair from her face and cocked her head towards the ground. “Speaking of which, what is that one doing?”

Sunshower followed her gaze towards Cinquefoil. “Resting, it appears.”

“The day is still fresh. Why doesn’t he make himself useful instead of sitting like a lump of mud?”

_Time and place._ “He is a courier pony. With nothing to deliver, I expect.”

“Homely little twig, isn’t he? Why is his face so long and weird looking?”

“Your assessment is incorrect! There is nothing amiss in his make, nor in his appearance.”

Thistle Whistle turned and lifted an eyebrow.

Sunshower’s wings buzzed like a hornet. “There is not. It is the average and natural face of a Mustangian, there is nothing wrong with it. You will forgive my outburst, but I simply cannot excuse imprecise language.”

The envoy rolled her eyes. “Relax your standards before they strangle you. There are such things as euphemisms and opinions, you know.”

Below them, the pegasi were hitched and the wagons were on the rise. Thistle Whistle nodded to her company and took her position. “Fair skies to you, little sister. Keep your skies well as you can.”

“And to you as well.”

As she watched the train of wagons lumber into the clouds, Sunshower heard a mighty crack of sound from below. She frantically looked about the mountains, sniffing for lightning. Nothing in the clouds implied lightning today, but bolts from the blue were not unheard of here.

Finally, she found it: not a bolt at all, but a fallen tree in Topsoil’s yard. The brown mare held her hammer in her teeth as she circled the branches with Cinquefoil, the two of them stepped about the branches with purpose and efficiency.

Sunshower smiled. So! He was only waiting for Topsoil and her hammer so that they could dispose of a useless tree. _There is your useless lump, Thistle Whistle!_

She basked in the sweet glow of vindication as she rode an updraft towards the high caves of Sill. Full regalia was improper attire for a simple lunch, after all.

 

* * *

 

“You’re late.” Cinquefoil sat upon the fallen hackberry, a ceramic bowl at his hooves. He peered up at Sunshower, dark eyes glittering and busy with thought. “You’re never late for anything.” Before she could correct him, he clarified, “At least, I’ve never _known_  you to be late for anything.”

“Ah, you are learning! I approve.” Sunshower alighted upon the hackberry, hooves tucking under her in a fluid motion. “There was much to speak of with my sisters and it occupied more time than previously assumed. I have not inconvenienced you, I hope?”

She wore only her breastplate and a shiny bit of metal that tied up her mane in a tall, winding coil. It made Cinquefoil think of a waterspout caught in fishing wire. He wondered if she’d freshly curried her coat; it seemed shinier than usual but it was hard to tell, since he rarely saw much of her coat anyhow.

“Oh, not at all,” he said. “A little worried, perhaps.”

The pegasus’ feathers twitched as she put down her tin pail. “You were worried about me?”

“A little.”

“You worry too much, then. Of all the things an earth pony needs to worry about, the well-being of a pegasus is not one of them.” Sunshower sniffed at the bowl. “This seems different… what is in it?”

Cinquefoil lifted his head proudly. “Those are the turnip greens we grew. Topsoil used the actual turnips for a soup, but I personally like the leaves better. The rest is dried berries, some regular old greens, a bit of spiced bark. You know, the usual. I remembered you don’t care for clover, so I left it out.”

“Grew?” Sunshower lifted an eyebrow. “Nothing grows here except mold and rock crystals.”

Cinquefoil’s proud smile swelled. “You’d be surprised. With the right circumstances and the knowhow just about anything can flourish anywhere. I bet one could manage growing bananas in the middle of Alaska if they really wanted to.”

Sunshower nibbled a turnip leaf. “I am sure that was supposed to be an impressive analogy, but I do not know of this ‘Alaska’, nor of bananas. Tell me what they are.”

“Oh, well…” The earth pony slowly chewed his mouthful of greens and tapped a hoof against his chin. “A banana is a fruit—a long, soft fruit that’s protected in a peel—that’s green at first, then turns yellow when it’s time to eat them, and they grow in hot places. Alaska is a cold, snowy place full of bears and wolves and dogsled races.”

“I see. What do these bananas taste like?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never had one.”

“Oh. How cold is Alaska, then? How far away is it? Yarak has flown many places, but I do not think that is one of them.”

“I’ve never been, so I don’t know.”

Sunshower lifted her head from the bowl, a stray bit of turnip leaf sticking from her teeth. “But your herd—or whatever you once had—they ran through this place and told you of it?”

“I suppose so. I remember the descriptions clearly.”

This was not entirely true. Cinquefoil indeed remembered learning of these things, but also remembered that no one had told him about it. But what other way would a pony know of foreign things? And it was more than bananas and Alaskas. There were engines and satellites and New Yorks and Bombays and pyramids and televisions and subways and San Franciscos. Countless things he had names for, but nothing beyond names. Vague outlines in the fog rolling around him. Cinquefoil blinked up towards Sill, at the burbling clouds. He froze. Outlines in the fog. Outlines there and gone again. Falling, falling, falling through the impenetrable, eroding fog, and he so small with his tight-gripped staff—

“Cinque?” Sunshower’s voice snapped him back into Caulkins. “Are you unwell?”

“I’m…” He pulled his legs in close and lowered his head. “I don’t think so. I’m alright.”

Sunshower had considerable doubt of that. For a brief moment she saw something in Cinquefoil’s face, something like his expression from the time she first caught him in the rain. Something like it, but worse. It was something more than fear. The firewater spark flashed in his eyes as he spoke of the Alaska, but sputtered and died as soon as his eyes set upon Sill. And Cinquefoil seemed to understand even less than Sunshower did. His pained confusion felt like a plucked blood feather.  

She pushed her tin pail under Cinquefoil’s nose. “Try the stuffed mushrooms. My sisters brought them all the way from Paradise Hall; you will find nothing like it under the sky.” Sunshower tipped one of the mushrooms to the side. “See the scorch marks upon the edges? Flames did not make these. It was charred and baked with lightning wrangled from the clouds. You can taste the sky in them.”

Sunshower smiled and let her tail flop beside Cinquefoil’s. “It is a small piece of home for those that cannot presently come home. They are meant to, um… bring comfort.”

The pegasus watched Cinquefoil gently take a mushroom in his teeth, careful not to burn himself. Even after the long flight here, the dish was still quite hot. The Mustangian rolled his shoulders happily at the spiced, smoky taste and hummed approvingly.

 “You can have them all, if you like.” Thistle Whistle would bring more the next time she came to the mountains. What was another year of waiting?

Cinquefoil blinked at her, surprised. “All of them? Are you sure?”

“I do not like to see you unhappy.” Sunshower stared straight ahead, studying the crooked path of bare trees in the distance. “The menace that hounds you lurks in places that I cannot follow. I would slash its throat or crush its neck under my hooves if I knew how, but I do not. If lightning-baked mushrooms make you happy, then I would prefer you have them.”

There was a terrible moment of silence. Sunshower was glad she couldn’t see his face. Whatever his expression, she did not know how she would respond. She didn’t look back until she heard him speak.

 “Thank you, Sunshower.” He smiled at her. “That’s very kind of you.”

“You are welcome, Cinquefoil.” She did not smile back and busied herself eating the rest of the salad.

Cinquefoil sampled a few more lightning mushrooms, then said, “By the way, I didn’t know you had sisters.”

“Naturally. I have over ten thousand in Pegasopolis alone. And at least seven thousand brothers. Or is it nine thousand? I can never recall correctly.”

 Sunshower chuckled at the stallion’s stunned expression. “All pegasi are each other’s, you silly pony. They are all my kin, as I am theirs. Our families are not so contained as the earth ponies’ and a far cry from the strict bloodlines of the unicorns. I do not understand the other tribes at all sometimes. Blood is only blood, why does it matter who shares it? The blood you spill for those you love is the only blood that matters.”

“What about General Yarak?” Cinquefoil tipped his head to the side. “Isn’t he your father?”

 “Well, of course he—” Sunshower’s eyes popped wide and her jackdaw laugh cackled loud and long. “You mean is he my _sire_? Cinquefoil, you cannot be serious! Yarak is of nearly five score years! Virile our tribe may be, but even we have our limits. No, my sire has been long dead, but I am not lacking in fathers. Yarak is a pegasus and I grew under his wing. This is more than enough.”

“I doubt Yarak is anypony’s sire.” The pegasus sighed and her smile shriveled. “I cannot imagine him being passionate or tender towards anything. Certainly not another pony. I am lucky to receive even a side glance from him.”

Something tickled Sunshower’s flank. She looked to discover Cinquefoil’s tail lay across her own, the black and green hairs mixing together like paint. She could feel the heat radiating from his coat and she wondered when he moved so close. Or perhaps it was she who moved close to him and she just never noticed.

And then, sudden and frightening and beautiful as a squall line: “I really like your company, Sunshower. More than any other pony’s.” Cinquefoil gave Sunshower one of his cacophonous stares and gently placed his hoof upon hers. His iron shoe was damp and chilled. “And I don’t enjoy _your_  unhappiness either.”

Sunshower’s wings pinched at the small of her back. Her back hooves squirmed and the tips of her ears turned a trembling red. “I wish you had not said so.”

“Why?” His voice was gentle and neutral. And very sweet.

The mare ran her tongue over her teeth. It was a question with a hundred answers: _Because I will disgrace my tribe, my home, my kindred and myself. Because I do not need to disappoint my father more than I already have. Because it is unlawful and immoral. Because Lightheart and Topsoil ran all the way to the Caulkins for a reason. Because I do not know what to do now._

She chose the greatest one: “Because I am not… unfond of your company either. Very much so.” Sunshower’s wings fidgeted, the feathers unable to settle. “And because you frighten me.”

“Me?” Cinquefoil inspected himself curiously. “I’ve a hard time imagining you afraid of anything, much less a scrawny Mustangian from the south.”

“I know what to expect from a griffon horde or a wild tornado. I know what would happen, should a great drake drag his belly over the Caulkin mountains. I know what to expect of the unicorn tribe, the pegasus tribe, and the earth pony tribe, save one. One gangly Mustangian that does not even have the courtesy to be ugly.”  

“Ah.” Cinquefoil shifted uncomfortably and glanced down at the hackberry bark.

The iron chill lifted from Sunshower’s hoof. She held it in place.

Lightly, very lightly, Sunshower nuzzled the soft, shivering hollow under Cinquefoil’s chin. She felt the vibrations of his surprised nicker, the tickle of breath in her mane.

“But never let it be said fear stops a pegasus.” Her wing lifted and settled, a yellow shawl of primaries curling over his brown shoulder.    

 

* * *

 

“Star Swirl. Star Swirl, wake up.”

“Hm? What’s the matter?”

Heartstrings moved from the window. “Look.”

The unicorn lifted his head from his desk, two lines of notes embossed on his face from where his cheek hit the page. He yawned again, smacked his mouth full of morning breath, and dragged himself to the window.

Star Swirl rubbed his eyes and looked. He was awake in an instant. “Oh.”

“Well.” He turned away from the window and the little ponies leaning into each other upon the fallen hackberry. Star Swirl clicked his tongue and chewed the nib of his quill. “That does complicate things a little, doesn’t it?”


	18. The Frayed Feathers, the Moss Wall, & the Stifle of Skin

One crisp morning at the cusp of the new year, as the sun blazed clear and cold through the fogged window, Cinquefoil awoke and could not remember his mother’s name.

He’d grown accustomed to the sudden forgetting or remembering of things, the way one gets used to a limp or a missing tooth, but this was a different matter. Before his time in the Caulkins, Cinquefoil knew only Heartstrings and Star Swirl, but a long, long time before that, he’d had his kinfolk. There’d been four of them living near a sleepy river: his mother, his mother’s mother, his father, and himself. He couldn’t recall the names of his grandmare or father, but both of them died early in Cinquefoil’s youth (the former from age, the latter from either tetanus or dragons, depending on who was telling the story) and he only knew their names from headstones.

His mother, though, had always been fresh in Cinquefoil’s mind and for the most part still was. He remembered the spiny cadence of her voice, the gnarl of black steel-wooly hair, the strict glint of her eyes, her hatred of blueberries, and her talent for melting into shadows. Yet he could not remember her name. It troubled the little pony deeply. Names were important.

It’d been short and as sharp as she was. As Cinquefoil curried his coat, he recalled that it started with an S or a C sound. As he brushed his tail and cleaned his hooves, he remembered that her name also had something to do with light. No more came to him, though he did his best to try.

Finally, despondent and frustrated with himself, he put the matter aside and went downstairs. Heartstrings and Star Swirl sat adjacent to each other at the longtable, one eating her oatmeal and the other staring into his notebook. Both looked in fair spirits, if not a little sleepy.

Heartstrings was the only one who looked up. “G’morrow, lad. How was your night?”

Cinquefoil grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl and sat beside her. “Morning, all. It was fine, far as I can tell. Did I wake anypony up?” He looked sidelong at Star Swirl, who sat absolutely still, chin resting on his hooves. “Can he hear me if I wish him good morning? Looks like he’s in one of his… Star Swirly moods.”

“Oh, I’m sure he hears well enough. Listenin’s another matter altogether. And no, ye slept sound as the dead.” She brushed her mane from her face, sipping her tea with an expression somewhere between hopeful concern and sad respite. “Same as it’s been for a fortnight.” Heartstrings blinked up at the ceiling and sighed. After a moment she asked, “What are your plans for today? Lightheart tells me the miners and farmers are on some sort of holiday.”

“I suppose. I was told we had the day off, though nopony told me why. I wish it weren’t so.” He took a small bite of apple and sighed. “I like to keep busy. Otherwise…”

“Otherwise what?”

“Otherwise I stay here. When I’m still for too long, my head drags me places I’d rather not be.”

“Hm. Well…” Heartstrings fiddled with her tail as she hesitated. “Have ye given thought to why it takes ye where it does? Perhaps… though they’re places ye don’t want t’go, they’re places ye need to go.”

Cinquefoil glanced at her, frowning.

“Nopony ever slayed a dragon by stayin’ at home.”

“Ponies don’t slay dragons.”

“No,” Star Swirl said. His eyes were focused, thoughtful, and still. “No, they don’t.” He snapped his notebook shut and sat up tall. “You are away to Mount Sill, are you not? To seek out Sunshower?”

“Well...” The earth pony shuffled his hooves. Sunshower went to him all the time, so he figured it’d be nice to pay her in kind for once. “Is it that obvious?”

“A fortnight with your muzzles in each other’s manes? Nay, not the least bit obvious.” Star Swirl rearranged his cape with a little jingle. “I wish to accompany you. There’s no more research I can scrape from Sill’s shell, so I’d like to take a gander inside.”

“Why?”

He stroked his beard and glanced at his notebook. “’Tis a mount with an… interesting magical composition. I require a closer look, but I would like permission to do so before I begin.”

“I could just ask for you.”

“Ha! And tell me what comes of it when you return at eventide, assuming you remember at all between the nuzzles and sunset picnics? No thank you. I’ll not take all that long, just—”

“You can come along if you like, Star Swirl.”

The unicorn raised a hoof to prepare a counter argument, then stopped and blinked in surprise. “Oh? Oh! Well, wonderful, then.”

Cinquefoil shrugged with half a smile. “Besides, it’s been a while since we’ve talked.”

 “Aye.” Star Swirl smiled back. “It has, hasn’t it?”

 

* * *

 

“Hold a moment!”

Cinquefoil tossed his head and groaned. “Oh come _on_ , I’m not even at a canter. Barely a trot!”

Star Swirl gasped as he hauled himself over the rocks, tongue dangling from his mouth. “You…you call _this_  a trot?”

“Well, I know it’s not a gallop.” He flicked his tail as the unicorn finally met him shoulder to shoulder. “I thought you said you climbed up and down Sill every day for a month. What happened?”

“Nothing happened! I just walk and take my time is all. ‘Tis a research expedition, not a race.” The unicorn peeled the wet cape off his shoulders to let his coat get some air. “And you’ve always had a gift for stamina I’m hard pressed to match.”

Star Swirl brushed the soggy mane from his face so he could look Cinquefoil in the eye. “You recall this, do you not? The last time you and I ran together?”

The ponies went on, at a walk this time. Cinquefoil took a moment to think the question over. “I do. In a wood of young trees with red little leaves?”

“The very same. Do you recall why we were running?”

“I saw something in the distance and I didn’t want to waste any time getting there. I also remember the old mare kept up better than you did.”

“What can I say? The range of a scholar’s run is one end of the archives to the other. I admit I was surprised at your stamina.” There was a quiet, clever light in Star Swirl’s eye. “Perhaps I’d forgotten what you were. But I do wonder: what was it you saw?”

“What?” Now it was Cinquefoil who lagged behind.

“In all our travels together, I never saw you run until that moment.” The unicorn’s voice was gentle, but firm. “What made you run, Cinquefoil?”

The earth pony looked upwards, not answering at first. The tip of Sill frothed like heady cider, shifting, shifting, shifting. The White Roc was still here. _Odd. It’s usually long gone this time of day._  But now that Cinquefoil thought on it, the last time the walls bent under the Roc was dust storm season. It hadn’t left since winter arrived soggy with sleet and steam. _I wonder why._

“I ran because I wanted to. And because I could.”

“That’s not exactly what I…” Star Swirl paused at the curious expression on Cinquefoil’s face. “What’s that look about?”

“It’s the strangest thing,” said Cinquefoil. “I remember you were smaller then. Not shorter, just smaller. But that can’t be. Not unless you learned a shrinking spell when I had my back turned.” The Mustangian tried to laugh it off, but the sound faltered before it left his lips. “It’s ridiculous, yet so clear. Clearer than my head’s felt in ages. Isn’t that strange?”

The stargazer’s pink beard trailed in the wind. “Maybe not as strange as you think. Suppose t’was not I who changed size, but y—”

“Star Swirl, can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Did I ever tell you about my mother?”

“Oh. Um… once or twice, I think.”

 “What did I say?”

“You told me that she knew more than you did about the city and she knew all about… I think you called them electrics? She made your home light up, like in that picture you showed me in the barn. You also said I’d have liked her.”

Cinquefoil edged closer. “Did I tell you anything else?”

“I’m afraid not.” Star Swirl frowned, concerned. “Why do you ask?”

 It was several seconds before he answered. “I was just wondering.” His voice was very quiet.

The unicorn reached out with a sympathetic hoof. Cinquefoil leaned away and picked up his pace.

Star Swirl pulled his hoof back and drooped his ears.

Cinquefoil’s coat rippled as he shuddered. Not looking back, he said, “It’s not you.” As the miasma of clouds touched his shoulders, something somewhere shifted.

Something in the mountain rocks made his solid hooves feel watery and clumsy. A subtle, skulking vibration coiling under his horseshoes that snaked into his shoulders and hammered behind his eyes. The Mustangian’s skin shuddered as if eager or anxious and pulled tight against his bones. His ears would not stop twitching, though there was nothing to hear except the wind.

The earth pony snorted and wobbled into a brisk amble to shake it off.

The amble became a canter.

The canter kicked into a gallop.

It did him no good. Where his distress slipped from his shoulders in Caulkin’s rounded mounts and jagged gorges, they stuck fast at Sill. He felt the press of clouds and went faster. The pressure in his chest swelled and stretched at his heels like a shadow.

The wind bit him until he felt it in his marrow and the chill hurt his throat. Finally, the little pony slowed to catch his breath. The uneasy buzz eased, but didn’t vanish. Cinquefoil felt it clot in his fur like a bloody wound. He could neither outrun nor outlast it.

Cinquefoil groaned and shifted his shoulders. The stargazer mentioned something like this once, asking if his new bones (why would they be new?) were hurting him.

“Say, Star Swirl?”

Cinquefoil looked at the miles of rock behind him and the mass of drifting cumulus below.

“…Oh. Right.”

The earth pony’s ears drooped. Poor Star Swirl was likely still at Sill’s midpoint, wondering where Cinquefoil had gone and hurt by his rudeness.

He peeped over the mountainside to get his bearings. No caverns in sight. There were more clouds below than above. In fact, there were no clouds at all. Cinquefoil squinted in the bright sunshine to see Sill’s tip scrape the pale blue sky.

Something felt strange… missing. His nose twitched. There was a faint scent of iron in the air. Iron, smoke, fresh water and another familiar scent Cinquefoil knew but could not name. But he did not smell rain. The sky was blue and clear and it seemed as if it had always been. His wet hoofprints were already fading on sun-bleached rock. There was an eerie gap of silence where rainfall used to be.

Cinquefoil noticed the extra shadow and realized he was not alone.

“Good morning. How long have you been there?”

General Yarak opened one brass eye. “Too long, colt.” His voice rumbled like thunder in November, and scratched the air with a whetted rasp. “Too long.”

The pegasus sprawled on the mountainside, wings limp and splayed flat over the rocks like a discarded cape. Frayed primary feathers bent at the wrong angles and curled in the breeze.

The other eye opened as he lifted his head. “She is not here.” Yarak’s teeth grit together as he rose and slowly folded his wings. His spine popped like embers. “She departed early to stay a thunderstorm before it starts. I doubt she will succeed. Regardless, you would not have found her at this elevation. Sunshower lacks the mettle.”  

Cinquefoil lashed his tail and frowned, but said nothing.

“Truths are truths, regardless of your opinion. Sunshower has flown the tip of Sill twice and it was more than enough for her. She is far from Sill more often, I have noticed.”

Yarak cocked an ear. “She slowly drifts in flight. When at rest, she does not fidget. Impatient huffs have become sighs. When she believes nopony is watching, she smiles to herself. My daughter is not as she was.” Stringy mane curtained the old stallion’s face as he leaned forward, back bent. “That is your doing. Your sort alters everything they touch.”

Cinquefoil frowned. “My sort, sir?”

The general’s ear perked at the word ‘sir’. “Yes. Change is your only constant.”

Cinquefoil flicked his ears and looked himself over. “But earth ponies are always constant. Constant and steady as the soil. And I haven’t done anything to your daughter. I do share her company and I don’t deny that I feel something for her. I can’t speak for Sunshower’s feelings, but whatever they are shaped at her will, sir. Not mine.”

“You are sharp for what you were, but slow for what you are. I am unsurprised. Love, I think, caught more of you than the Roc did. It makes you rethink what you know, ignore instincts, abandon plans.”

“Pardon?”

Yarak slowly turned to the Mustangian, dragging his eye over the brown withers, neck, and croup. The near-black eyes and curly mane, the shivering dandelion on the flank. He twitched his ears again and made a soft sound at the back of his throat. “Well crafted. The Order of Masquerade would envy it. Who made it? Your jingling stargazer or your elderly minstrel? I do not think you did it by yourself, but I have seen stranger.”

 “I don’t understand you. Who made what?” The earth pony knitted his brow and frowned. “Topsoil made my horseshoes, if that’s what you’re asking.”

The breeze tugged Yarak’s mane away. Cinquefoil saw every sagging line in the general’s face pull taut. The fierce gleam in his eye was dreadfully familiar. The old pegasus flicked his tail and stepped forward. The earth pony took a step back and averted his gaze.

At the edge of the Caulkins, a great mass of clouds twisted at the edge of the Caulkins, slowly shifting from light grey to dark violet, as if forming a bruise. A gleam of yellow sliced through them, arced into the sun, and dove in again. There was a quiet protest of thunder.

Cinquefoil watched Sunshower work, shivering in the sunlight as the wind hissed through his mane. He wished that the clouds would settle so she could finish early and return to Sill. Or if not return, at least look in his direction so he could feel warm again. When had it become so cold?

“You answer to a name that is not your name. You wear a skin that is not your skin. Still I know you, pantomimist.” Yarak’s voice softly rumbled like an empty stomach. “I doubted for a time, but there is no mistaking you. The dart of your eye, the scraping of your sigh, the click of your hoof on the rock.”

Against his better judgment, Cinquefoil looked behind him. The pegasus was so close he could count the pale scars running along his side or clustered in the crook of his wing.

“I am too old for games.” General Yarak pulled himself to full height and cast the earth pony in his shadow. Joints creaked, muscle flexed under wrinkles, and pinions reached for the sky. Where age should have withered, Yarak had calcified. “I tell you this once: do _not_  taunt me. I know you. And I know your purpose.”

The Mustangian blinked up warily. Yarak waited for a response, but would not accept Cinquefoil’s denial. But he had to say something. He glanced at the feathering at the general’s hooves and observed, “You’re a draft pony.”

“I was.” The old cob pricked his ears and turned away. “The wind is turning. Come.” He turned on his heel and strode up the mount.

The certainty of Yarak’s sanity fell away by the second and Cinquefoil was sure now that the danger of Sill lay not in the sharp loose stones, nor the lightning, nor the Roc. He lingered back and debated a frantic dash back down the mountain.

The cumulus swept under and over them like river currents, milky and thick. For a moment the Mustangian thought he saw a talon the color of dishwater.

“I do not suggest running. The moon waxes and the Roc is sleeping but he will wake at the hoofbeat of fleeing quarry. Try it if you like, I will not stop you.” Yarak peered over the sharp edge of his shoulder. “The end will be the same.”

Cinquefoil took a cautious step forward and paused for one final look towards safety. He searched for a bit of yellow in the sky, did not find it, and went on ahead. He trailed in silence, a pace or two behind the general’s tail.

“I don’t see why the Roc would quarrel with me, I’ve never bothered it. And Sunshower told me it doesn’t eat ponies, just moonglow and water vapor.”

“Correct, in part. He consumes moonlight and vapor—the sheen of lightning and the glitter of diamond dust as well—but it does not sustain him. They keep his feathers bright and his bill sharp. But the White Roc is nourished on something else.” The general cut off Cinquefoil’s question before it was asked. “There is another, black as he is white. She nests at the bottom of the world as he once nested at the top of it. When his time is done here, he will go to meet her and then they both will part. I will have gone home by then.”                

“Home, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Do you mean Pegasopolis? Or the Islands?”

“Neither. And I cannot and will not go unless I am sent in the proper way of a pegasus.”  Yarak’s wings shifted on his back, down and up again. “It is my hope that you, or one like you, will grant me that. It is a gamble, as all things are with your sort. You do things how you will, where you will, when you will. It is a foolish hope. I have it all the same. I do not think it a greedy request for a stallion of my efforts. It is no more than any draft pony would ask.”  

Yarak’s left wing sagged, and for a moment, looked feebler than he was. “I wonder if they know. …If they refuse me out of spite.” He looked over his sagged shoulder and blinked slowly at the earth pony. “Have you spite for me?”

Cinquefoil lifted his eyebrows and looked over his own shoulder in confusion. “Me?”

“You.”

“Um. No, sir. Why would I? I’ve barely met you. If you must know the truth, I don’t think anything of you at all besides…” He rubbed his teeth with his tongue. “Besides wanting you to act a little kinder towards your daughter.”

Yarak’s ears went up, surprised. “Clarify yourself. I am not unkind to Sunshower, I treat her as any of my kin.”

“Maybe, but there’s more to kindness than simply not being unkind.” Cinquefoil trotted on ahead so that they walked gaskin to shoulder. “She is lonesome and frets over your opinion of her. At the least, you could toss a kind word to her more than once a decade. Though I think Sunshower would be happy to hear any word from you, kind or not.”

“Indeed. One of many things that would make her happy. Just as many things would make Thistle Whistle or Maelstrom happy as well.”

Cinquefoil frowned. “Yes, but neither of them live with you. Thistle Whistle has hundreds of pegasi to talk to. Sunshower only has one and that one won’t give her the time of day.”

Yarak blinked. “If Sunshower keeps no clocks or sundials, that is no fault of mine.”

“But surely you can see how she hurts, sir. And…” Cinquefoil rooted for some logical trump card to throw down but his deck was empty. So instead, more frustrated with himself than the situation, he asked, “Don’t you care?”

A grey ear twitched at the sudden edge in the Mustangian’s tone. “To the necessary extent. The girl has been under my wing for a score of years. I fed her. I fledged her. I kept the rain off her feathers. Sunshower’s wings are uninjured. She is not ignorant of direction. She is under no contract with the Empire, nor the miners. If Sunshower finds no happiness in the Caulkins, that is Sunshower’s concern.”

In the east, a ray of sunlight cracked through a raincloud. The cloud dissipated, then reformed. A yellow speck buzzed around it, attacking from all sides.

“Her sire, I expect, was some unnamed envoy called into the mountains in the heat of spring and gone home again. The dam dead or unwanting. There is little warmth in Sill. Littler in myself. But Sunshower is a pegasus and my kin. Hence, I allowed the foal residence of my mountain.” Yarak’s wrinkles sagged as he frowned. “If I have been unkind, it is in that action. No more. No less.”

The raincloud hadn’t vanished, but was a paler shade and a little smaller. A pegasus perched on its side to inspect it, kicking to file down the extra fluff and waiting to see if it would reform. After a few moments, the pegasus kicked off the cloud and darted away.

The earth pony flicked his tail and watched the sky until the flicker of yellow got smaller, than vanished. He turned back to Yarak. The elder pony’s expression was stale, but amused.

“What?”

“I suspected a ruse at first: allying with the enemy’s offspring to dig for clues. An attempt to ruffle my feathers by putting your nose in my daughter’s, perhaps.”

The Mustangian looked away. He couldn’t help remembering the flawless angle of yellow feathers around his shoulders, the smooth gold sheen they took in firelight, how they brushed against his nose and made him sneeze, which made her laugh. His coat took on a ruddy tinge. “You saw that?”

“Among other things. It was an interesting turn of events.” The general’s ears flicked. “It made me wonder. I should thank you for that. It has been a long time since I have been incorrect.”

“Um.” Cinquefoil fidgeted under his ruddy, constrictive coat. When else were eyes upon him? When he ran or ate or gardened or lay wide-awake in his room? The thought knotted in his throat and grew mold.

 “How long have you been here, Cinquefoil?”  

Something in the way Yarak rolled the syllables of his name made Cinquefoil want to snatch it from the air and hide it. It sounded flat and dry, like dead leaves in the wind. It sounded brittle and uninspired and false. Keeper of the mount or no, what right had Yarak to it?

The earth pony flattened his ears and steadied his eyes. “I have been here three months, two weeks, and five days. Sir.”

 “Hm.” The general blinked slowly. “ _There_  it is,” was all that he said.

The sun grew weaker as they went on, the pat of rain stronger and bolder. A curtain of rainfall crashed up ahead, a solid line of water separating the soaked and sun-bleached rocks. Cinquefoil cautiously stuck a forehoof into the wet air, half expecting to bump against a wall of glass or magic.

Yarak walked on ahead, shoulders in sharp relief under his wet mane and dripping coat. His pace didn’t change, yet he seemed to move faster. Sensing an unasked question, he said, “The sunlit area is not unlike a hurricane eye. Rain falls all places but there.”

“Why does the rain fall like that?” Cinquefoil shivered and deeply regretted leaving his cloak behind. “Is it wild?”

“No. The clouds are not tame, nor are they wild. Both, perhaps. Weather patterns do not behave in their presence.”

“Whose presence?”

“You know whose.” Yarak’s tone never changed, though his muscles in his neck went rigid. “It comes of magic and the lack thereof pushing against them. The clouds do not know what to do. I suspect witchery is involved as well. But I do not know for certain.

“Witchery…” Cinquefoil tilted his head slightly. “You mean like unicorn magic?”

“I do not.”  

The wind pitched in fierce, piping little gusts and long moaning blasts. Somewhere far below, Cotterpin’s terrier barked himself hoarse. General Yarak’s ears stood rail straight, his jaw slack. He leaned into the wind, spread a wing and breathed it in.

The general stopped at a place where sheets of rock split and fractured with long crooked scars of empty space and hollow holes. When the breeze brushed over them, old Sill whistled and sang like a silver flute. When Cinquefoil moved his head just so, the sunlight leaked through the wall of rain and gave the grey stone a strange violet sheen.

Yarak’s wings fanned flat at his sides. “There they are.” His scraping voice rose and shook, feathered and soft as a new fledgling. Brass eyes sparked and grim wrinkles eased into smile lines, though the stallion did not smile. He stood over a great crevice just big enough for a skinny pony to slip through, a straight drop down into the mountain’s core. A grey hoof inclined towards the thin patch of drowsy cirrus just below them.

Slowly, surely, the wind brushed the cirrus to the side to reveal the mountainside. Cinquefoil edged forward and blinked at it. A few feet off and slightly to the right, the cavern mouth yawned down and down and down into Sill. It looked nothing like the caves he passed on the way up. The opening was saw-toothed and precise, as if a great chunk of the mountain was ripped away. Topsoil’s house could squeeze through it easily, smithy and all. The inner walls were mossy and dripping, and echoed with the squeak of bats. Massive sheets of shifting cloud lounged above and below, white and grey and glutted with rain.

Yarak stared into it the way hollow-bellied urchins stared at restaurant windows or dragons beheld their heaps of sapphires and fire rubies. His old wings flopped limply, completely drenched, though the water should have bounced off his feathers.

“There they are,” he repeated, louder this time. “All there were, all there are, stuffed down Sill’s throat. Every grasping hand, every conquering foot, every squalling, defiant voice is mine. I choose to keep them. ”  

 Cinquefoil stretched his neck as far as it could go. He saw the wet moss and walls of violet stone sloping downward. He saw a colony of fruit bats dozing in the corner; a little green one blinked berry-red eyes at him. Far below something glinted silver, perhaps water, and a long stretch of green, likely more moss. The wind shrieked in his ears and the rock hurt his hooves, but he saw nothing more.

“There was a time,” Yarak said, “When I presumed to keep them for the sake and safety of my kin and all other pony tribes. I am no scholar, but I have read the scrolls: the slaying of Tirek, the hags of Gloom. The little dragonslayer, the lord of the gem mines, the banishment of Grogar. The fifty league crater North Star and Lofty found over the rainbow bridge. But stories are stories. I know what I have seen. What they—what _you_ —are capable of.”

The earth pony’s ears pricked and looked at Yarak, who looked back at him. It was not a direful or suspicious sort of look. He watched him with a calm neutrality, as one watches dust motes drift in the air or ripples in a pond.  

“Stories are stories, songs are songs, and ponies say many things. They say you destroy and ruin everything you touch. But this, I know, is untrue. I trust the testimony of my eyes. They do not destroy. They conquer. They change. They corrupt and they claim. And they allow nothing to exist in any way other than they see fit. Destruction is the corollary, not the cause. A casualty of the campaign. I have seen them burn and kill and ravage simply because they will not allow another to take what they have. The old firebrands are a covetous and stubborn sort. I do not blame those that shiver in the places they have been. Indeed, it is wise for little ponies to be cautious in their shadow.

“They are not fiends, I think. But they are dangerous. And so, for a time I kept them in the name of caution. I was certain this was my reason. To ward was my duty, the only duty I had ever known and thus I knew it to be true. I was younger, then. I did not know truths could change.”

Cinquefoil’s tail snapped in the wind as a cloudburst rolled overhead. He shook himself, wet and shivering. The white clouds puffed like feathers as the old stallion’s gaze sliced through skin.

The general nocked an ear, water dripping from sharp little spikes of fur on his chin. “There was another time, a longer time, when I kept them for the sake of themselves. They create more than they destroy. I saw some of the things they made. The cracking ruins of cities, the proud abandoned sprawl of unruined cities with great towers and aqueducts. I saw the strange mechanical beasts of burden they rode in or upon by land and sea and air. I liked their steel beast of the air. I saw them keep to each other, much in the way little ponies do.”

Yarak sighed or blinked or the wind leaned against him in a different way. Gradually or all at once Cinquefoil saw him change. The traces of indigo sparkled in his grey coat, the creak of lonely bones became kinetic and swift. His eyes shone, young and starving.

Cinquefoil took a step back. Yarak’s ear twitched but made no move toward him.  

“I saw that even in their greatest numbers, not one of them was the same as the others. Not one! There were similarities—in the shade or texture of fur or skin, in action or thought or strategy—but I never saw the same one twice and in an instant any one of them can remake themselves. The loss of even one was unacceptable.” Yarak’s thin mane fluttered as it hung from his neck like a row of fishing lines. “It is a poor world for them now. They endure and adapt, but all things have their limit. It would benefit them, I thought, to have a place where they would not be troubled by an encroaching pony town or raided by marauding dragons. A preserve, of sorts. It was a noble idea and I liked it.”

His chuckle was the low creak of a galleon shifting on the waves. “But ponies of our tribe are poor liars, even to ourselves. No, I choose to keep them because it is within my ability and suits me to do so. I keep them because I can.”

The strange feeling in the rocks came back with a vengeance. An old ache bent Cinquefoil’s back. He pulled his forehoof close to his chest, gritted his teeth and tried to focus on something else. Something besides the acquainted scraping drawl of Yarak’s voice or the terrible press of clouds. The Mustangian groaned and peered over the mountain side. Jackdaws swept through the clouds in black arcs and carried Sunshower’s laugh in their beaks.

The corners of Yarak’s mouth tightened and stretched like ill-fitted leather. It was his first smile in eight years. “In the first years they arrived, I watched them sunup to sundown from my place on a high inner crag or low cloud floating. They threw objects when I was low enough to hit, hid themselves when I was not, and shushed their voices to speak with their hands. Hiding spots often changed, but if I was conscious then I was there. I would watch them still, but the clouds will not hold me and my wings cannot carry me in.”

He eyed his feathers, cracked and greyer than the rest of him. “I once heard your people say nothing is free. They are right.”

Cinquefoil looked away from the old cob’s smile. Looking at it too long gave him the ghastly feeling that the two stallions shared some sort of common ground. He pawed the rock and frowned, unsure how to respond. “I don’t… think I understand. I don’t see anything in there at all.”

“Hm.” The general stepped closer and peered into the great gap of mountain. “Yes, it is a poor view from here. The angle is poor, distance high. Still, some days I will see them. A glance of one walking by or climbing the rock face to stare at the sky, wondering if they see clouds or Roc feathers. They crouch an arm’s length of freedom but dare not breach it yet, unable to tell the difference. I see them often now: younger ones born not caught, who know nothing of the Roc’s touch and everything of Sill’s walls. I see them sitting on the high crags with the sun on their young, flat faces. They do not flee or break my stare when I see them. The Roc kept the humans at bay for a long time but lately...”

He blinked at the little earth pony poking at his mountain. “Lately, they seem restless. I wonder if they sense you.”

Cinquefoil flopped his soaked tail and looked at himself. “Me?”

The pegasus nodded.  

“I...” The earth pony hesitated as Yarak stepped closer. A slippery mountain top was not the place to try this pony’s patience. “I… doubt that, sir.”

“It is only a possibility. One of many. Indeed, there is always something new to be found in humans.”

Cinquefoil’s mouth went dry as the air turned uneasy. He shuddered from eartip to tail and swallowed the lump in his throat.

“I have known ponies. I have known the griffons and the minotaurs. The diamond-dogs, the deerfolk, dragons of all colors and sizes.” Yarak gave a dismissive snort. “They bleed into one another. Even when they surprise me, they are predictable. Never with humans. They are as varied as they are proud.”

The general jumped to loom over the cliff face. Battered wings spread out like a rain-soaked book as his muscles coiled. The Mustangian leaned away from him and looked down. For the first time he noticed strange markings that scarred the back walls of the cave. As if carved. A familiar chill ran down his spine. Yarak leaned closer.

“Ah, but what makes them strong makes them weak.” The old pony’s smile returned. It had teeth. “Fitting for a contradiction creature, isn’t it? It goads them into conflict and it complicates. I was amazed to find they even spoke in different tongues. The pony tribes, the Arabians, and the donkeys are worlds apart, yet the only difference in our language is dialect. Humans are all the same species, yet have more languages than they know what to do with. An individual knows two or three at most. I had every human on the planet cloistered in Sill, yet many could not share a sentence between them and without a common voice, they could not organize themselves.”

General Yarak paused for a moment, his face unsettlingly close but his eyes far, far away. Sour breath puffed on the velvet of Cinquefoil’s nose. He stepped away and turned his head towards the clouds. The earth pony sighed in relief.

“And then… and then, one quiet summer night, when the wind was high and the rain was low, I heard them. The high and low voices, young and piping, old and creaking. I heard the quiet, frightened pleas and the wild, outraged demands and the hopeless sobs and the defiant yawps. They sounded out all at once, every voice different but the same as they joined in harmony. Many in one. One in many. It was a song. It had no words, for there was no need.

“I hovered in the air and listened as the sound lit the night like a bonfire. I felt the embers of each note in my chest. I may have cried, I do not recall. Even now, their fire song is wild and new and frightening to me. Even after so many years. They sing out every week. Sometimes all of them. Sometimes just one or two. And I hear them on the wind.”

General Yarak’s eyes wavered and became very soft. “I knew humans were fierce and I knew they were clever.” His jaw went slack and quivered, as if preparing to laugh or cry. “I did not know they could be beautiful.”

A familiar fog drifted at Cinquefoil’s shoulders. The empty wind scratched his ears and his stomach sloshed as it twisted in on itself. An old black terror that had skulked in the shadow of Sunshower’s brightness came from hiding and roused itself tall. Unnamed nightmares drifted in the wind, unashamed of fair daylight and boosted by Yarak’s voice. There was no doubt of it. The old cob was mad as a frothed hound. Cinquefoil didn’t think Yarak even saw him anymore.

“The first time I saw one was in the eve of the war. The griffon army had encroached as far south as the Unicorn Kingdom. My company was at the border, I think, for the few horned ponies we saw were travelers. We were investigating reports on an anomaly. The night before, a local town reported pegasi suddenly falling from the air as if made of stone. Dozens of warriors smashed against their cobblestone and rooftops, strange arrows sticking from their necks. Similar rumors floated among our kind as well, but ponies of all tribes like to hear themselves talk. This was the first time we had a witness.”

Cinquefoil sank to his knees and stared at the sheets of grey rock. His hooves couldn’t touch the mountain for more than a few moments. It was no longer an aching buzz. It felt like biting ants writhed on his skin from the hocks on down. Yarak glanced down at him and flicked his tail.

“We saw the griffon at sunset. Not an army. Not a scouting party. Just one. He was a great fellow, but he was outnumbered and unarmored. Whip Wing and Sanguine Song fell first. Like stones, as the unicorns said. And Spindrift a moment after. I swung away and upwards as the griffon went into a stoop and my blade found his neck. Yet as I veered away, I heard not one voice cry out, but two.”  

Yarak’s wings limply rose and fell upon his back. His smile returned, small and wondrous. “I rose high and beheld her: a human female falling through the air. No more than six or seven years out of childhood, dressed in leathers black as the griffon feathers she clutched. A dark braid whipped over her shoulder and she stared back at me through a strange green visor that gave her the look of a dragonfly. So stuck was I in spirit, my focus failed me. I did not realize she’d nocked her bow.”

The grin widened as the pegasus chuckled in disbelief. “In mid-fall she swerved around and hit me.” He stretched his right wing out, the crook marked with a pale scar.

“I must admit, it was a good shot. The three of us hit the forest hard. If my wingblade did not kill the griffon, then the fall certainly did. Without my armor and the pine trees to slow my fall, I am sure I’d have fared the same. I spat the blood from my muzzle, found my legs. The human lay a few yards away. She held herself up by her shaking arms. She bled badly; shards of bone jutted from her legs, and her pale shoulders were dark with bruises. The human rolled slightly and I saw the great tear in her side; by the blood loss, I knew she could not be long for the world. Her green visor had broken, eye cut or blinded with blood, I could not tell. But not fully blinded, for as I stepped forward, she looked at me.”

General Yarak blinked down at Cinquefoil. “And do you know what she did?” His grandfatherly tone was too warm for Sill.

 The earth pony stared back emptily. “I don’t.” He was soaked and shaking and cold. His skin strangled him. His head hurt as it fought against itself. Cinquefoil kept his breathing slow and light to ease the pain in his chest. It was a struggle, for the wind bade to steal every breath. He needed rest. Just a bit of warmth, a minute of silence to put his head together. That was all he needed. That was all.

Yarak and the gale blew on, relentless.

“Why, without a thought she reached into her quiver! Out she pulled an arrow, steel shaft and iron head, just as the unicorns said. Orange pegasus feathers flared at the end. It shook as she struggled to aim.” Yarak’s wings clapped as he pawed the rocks. “I could not understand it. The fight was lost. Her comrade was dead. In her current position, the bolt would just bounce of my chest plate, even if she could manage the shot. Yet, I saw no hatred in her eye. Resolve and sorrow, yes. But no hatred.

“Fallen griffons did not act this way. Ponies did not act this way. Dragons did not behave this way. There was no honor lost in her death and nothing more to gain. I wanted to understand, so I lowered my blades and I asked, ‘Why do you persist?’

“In an accent I could not place, she said to me, ‘I can still hold my bow’. Never had I felt so honored, nor found an opponent so worthy.”

Cinquefoil squirmed. Yarak stared after him in the anxious, eager way of hounds at the hunting horn.

The earth pony looked away. His eyes settled on a bald patch near his fetlock. It was marked with a strange pattern. As if it had been bitten. But it looked nothing like the scars left by a dog or snake. The teeth that left this weren’t sharp. Cinquefoil’s mouth went dry.    

“It was a month before my wings healed. Grounded miles from anypony, I rested deep in thought. If there was one contradiction creature in league with the griffons, there must be others. Griffonic forces clashed with my tribe before, but never had they reached so far beyond their borders or hit so hard. Nopony but I had seen their secret weapon and lived. I lay in the lichen and remembered the city of Hoofshire bright in orange flames and the air thick with ash. I recalled of Sanguine Song’s bright laugh as we touched noses and red feathers under my chin. I thought of the Pegasus Empire, hungry and spent from an eight year war. My wing mended and I flew north to seek the White Roc.”

The Mustangian pricked his ears at the sound of sand falling on sand. Carefully, slowly, he eyed the mass of still clouds above him and shuddered. He did not think they were clouds at all.

Yarak followed his gaze. “He was smaller then.”

Cinquefoil gulped. Despite his discomfort, he had to ask. “What _is_  the Roc?”

The general lifted an eyebrow, as if the answer was obvious. “The White Roc is the White Roc. Element of the sky, given feathers and form. He was not hard to find. For those that seek him, he never is. He peered from his nest and considered me: a stallion just past the prime of his life that flew to the top of the world and looked in his eyes without flinching. He asked me what I wanted.”

“I didn’t think the Roc could speak,” said Cinquefoil.

“He cannot,” Yarak said. “But we understand each other well enough. I told him I wanted to end the war. That I wanted to ensure my brothers and sisters did not die without cause. The White Roc blinked and waited. He knew before I knew that was not all I wanted.  

“So I sat and thought. I told him: ‘Another. Another contradiction creature. Another and another and another until I have all there are. Until I am beaten and sent home’ I did not fully know why I wanted them. I did not know what I would do once I had them. But neither of us cared about that. The Roc agreed.”

Cinquefoil huddled his neck in his shoulders as he curled to get warm. His hooves were numb. “Why? What did it have to gain?”

“You asked of me what the White Roc eats.” Yarak spread his wings and indicated the long shining scar that ran from barrel to throat, straight across the ribcage. “Hearts. He does not need many. Just one. It beats now in the depth of the Roc’s gizzard. So long as the bargain is unsettled, it beats still.

“The war was over in four days. One for the griffon emperor and his elite guard. Three to gather the humans in his territories. The first catch was the hardest. I did not yet know how to hunt or corral and humans are a tricky catch.” Yarak’s wings rose like a plume of smoke. “Oh! But what a catch it was. For the time, I was satisfied. I returned home.”

The Mustangian pricked his left ear, though the wind still hurt him. But he had never before met anyone who left their home and managed to return. He had come to believe that like carrying water in a sieve or weaving a rope of ashes, the task was impossible. But if Yarak could do it, than anypony could. Anybody could. Cinquefoil lifted his right ear and gritted his teeth as the wind hissed and bit.

The old cob’s wings drew back in to drape limp at the shoulder. The color in his fur sank, drowned in grey. His body slumped with his frown. He waited a moment before speaking again. “My brothers and sisters did not approve. They did not understand. In the rubble of the war, the focus was reconstruction, to tend to their relics and rainclouds. I could find no comfort there. I was hungry and I was frustrated. The war was over. I’d naught left to do but retire. Or tutor foals. My efforts were praised, of course. But when I spoke to them, it was not as it was before.”

Cinquefoil lowered his ears again. He knew two things: he was wide awake and pegasi were poor liars. Never had he been more frightened for himself. Too soft even for himself to hear, he said, “Your home was not your home.”

“They seemed… almost afraid of me. The pegasus frowned and looked back at Cinquefoil. The youth in his eyes shriveled into dust. “I, their own brother. An older, keener brother than the one that left them, but their brother still. They were unsurprised when I left, though Free Fall was sorry to have it so. Of course I left. How can anypony rest behind their walls, knowing what lies beyond them? Home was not enough.”

The general’s snort clouded in the air. “A permanent nap in the clouds from illness or age. What sort of death is that for a pegasus? No. We end as the day ends: cast in red.” In an instant his face snapped back into hard lines and sharp creases. Yarak was himself again.

Cinquefoil lay his head on his hooves with a tired, relieved sigh. The pressure in his chest finally loosed. One foot on his neck, not four. He felt well enough to stand again, though his legs still felt a little rubbery.

Yarak absently pawed at Sill. He peered downward as long ropes of cloud piled at the cave mouth until there was nothing more to see than cumulus on cumulus hugging the edge of a mountain. The shrieking wind settled into a dull, malcontent breeze.

Not looking back at the earth pony, he said, “I flew with him or a long time. I do not know how long. Before Sunshower arrived but after my coat grizzled. I went with him until I could go no longer. The time spent watching what I fought to catch sapped the air from my wings. It is alright. I was still there for the greater catches: the travelers I caught in iron carriages speeding away by land, by sea, by air. Some I found socializing in the minotaurs’ labyrinth city or laboring in diamond dogs mines or studying potions with zebras in the hotlands. I enjoyed the taking of a great cluster kept by a dragon in the far west.”

Yarak twitched an ear in thought. “Or the humans kept the dragon… the difference was hard to tell. And I remember others. Some fought. Some ran. Some did both or neither. I purchased a few, bargained for a couple of them. One way or another, I gathered and kept them all. ”

General Yarak peered over his shoulder. The glint in his eye settled on Cinquefoil as a dagger settles upon a neck. “All but the one that walked to my doorstep.”  

Cinquefoil folded his ears and took a step back. The muscles tensed to break and run. He took another step, stumbling and jerking back his hoof when it met empty air.

He glanced back at Yarak. The old shoulders braced, hooves set to spring, wings splayed as if still bladed. He’d seen Sunshower take the same position just before she ran off the feral hounds. But Cinquefoil was no snarling predator, no fierce combatant, no mythical creature. He was only himself, a little brown pony alone on the mountain, feeling ill and wanting for home. Why was the general looking at him this way?

“Sir. Sir, truly, I want nothing of you and I’ve no—”

“ _Don’t_.”

Yarak’s ears snapped against his skull. He reared and crashed, brown water splashing at his fetlocks. “Don’t you dare.” His eyes were wide and shaking, full of frustration and doubt and waiting for something, though Cinquefoil did not know what. It was a look the earth pony knew well. Star Swirl once had it.

“I know the lie that crouches upon your tongue.” The general stood at full height, the earth pony in the shadow of wings spread to strike. “I asked you once not to taunt me.”  

“I’ve been _nothing_  but honest with you.” Cinquefoil shook his head. The fog built again, pressing against his skull until he felt the shape of his eyes. “I-I don’t know what else you want me to say. I don’t know what you want of me!” He stared up wide-eyed, fearing what would happen in the time it took to blink. What he would see when he closed his eyes.

Yarak’s wings snapped shut. He sniffed and glowered at the little pony cowering in the shadow of Sill. His neck creaked as he tilted it to look at the dandelion on Cinquefoil’s flank. He swished his thin tail, creased his brow, and looked the pony over again. “Your stance has changed”, he said. “And your eyes—no. I am not mistaken.” The grey cob rumbled in his throat and swung his head away. “I am not.”  

If Yarak said any more, Cinquefoil did not hear, and he did not see when he left. The grumble of oncoming thunder was the cavernous stomach of the manticore; the towering shadow of the Caulkins were skeletons of steel and walls of brick wasting away, wearing down and down and down where white touched them; the obsidian digging into his hoof were thorns, vicious and dark, rimmed with red. The breeze rang with the song of a seapony, far away and very sweet and worse than all the terrors put together.

Somewhere someone told him, “Come away.”

Cinquefoil did not catch his breath until he felt something soft on his shoulder.

Star Swirl nudged again with his muzzle. “Come away and be still. We should head back. ‘Tis a thunderstorm coming and Sunshower told me it brings hail.”

“Oh. I...I, uh. Did…” Cinquefoil took a deep, tremored breath and ran his hooves through his mane. He remembered he was soaked to the skin and shivered. “Did you ask her about the caves?”

 “I found her as she was leaving. She’d no objections, but I think that was just because she was in a rush. Ha, but an agreement is an agreement, yes?”

“Yeah.”

“Nevermind it, let’s away to Topsoil’s quickly. ‘Tis a colossal storm, I hear, and my footing’s not as sure as yours.” The unicorn stood and waited for Cinquefoil to move on ahead.

Star Swirl peered over the edge of the mountain, stroking his drippy beard. “Not above nor below, far away and close, faring well and poorly, not above not below, but inside. I wonder how many…” He stepped back, frowning slightly. The stargazer blinked down the path he’d seen Yarak follow, where the rocks were smooth and crags along the sides bent to shelter a pony from the wind. He looked back to Cinquefoil, brown in the grey with no cloak to keep the rain from his back. Star Swirl sighed and trotted down to meet him.

 

* * *

 As the two ponies passed Sill’s midpoint, Cinquefoil twitched his ears in the breeze and said, “Sconce.”

Star Swirl looked up. The clouds were so dark only the white of his eyes and the bright pink of his beard was clear. “Pardon?”

“My mother’s name. It was Sconce. I remembered while I was atop the mountain.”

“Ah.”

“I think I was right. You would have liked her. I don’t think she’d have cared much for you, though. She didn’t like strangers much. Star Swirl?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think Sunshower is disappointed I didn’t show up today?”

“…I don’t know. I’m a poor judge of ponies. But I think she’d understand.”

Star Swirl’s cape flapped as the wind grew colder. As the dim embers of light from Topsoil’s house came into view he asked, “Cinquefoil?”

“Yes?”

“Did you remember anything else?”

Cinquefoil blinked back at him in silence. He leaned against the unicorn for warmth, tired and missing the sun.


	19. The Empty Room & The Verdigris Door

The night was dark and Sunshower could not sleep, though not for lack of trying. She flopped in her misty bed of cirrus and feather down and sighed. Something in the air was not right.

It had not been right when she’d awoke that morning. It had not been right when she’d fought to tame the mounting thunderstorm. It had not been right when she’d returned to Sill, failure sticking to her hooves like tar. She had hoped the feeling would evaporate as the day progressed, but instead it had condensed and grown fat on her shoulders.

The pegasus rolled her shoulders as she sat up. It would be time for her patrol soon. If there was any sleep to be gained, it would do her no good now. Sunshower glared at the disobedient sky, tooth-rot black and without a moon. Veins of lighting forked through curtains of rain.

A gust of wind stole through the cavern and unsettled the fluffy down. In the lightning flash Sunshower saw her feathers swirl and toss through the cavern like dandelion seeds.

She’d eaten alone that evening. By the time she’d given up on taming thunderheads and gone home, it was near sunset. For the first time in over a month, she’d not seen Cinquefoil all day; not dashing over the rounded mountains, not resting in the smithy, not tending the garden or looking out the window. When Sunshower inquired after him in the late afternoon, the bearded unicorn told her Cinque had gone to bed early.

Sunshower frowned. Perhaps he had taken ill? It was unlike him to retire to bed, or even to his room, so early in the day. The pegasus hopped out of bed and tapped her hoof against the rock thoughtfully. She began to pace, one stone wall to the other and back again. Perhaps he had injured himself? Or he was caught up in his own head again, one of those turns of his.

But no, she knew Cinquefoil too well for that. If he was hurt in spirit, Sunshower would have found him galloping through the Caulkins. If he was hurt in body, she would have found him laid out in the smithy, watching the puddles gather rain. Or in the dining hall, watching jackdaws from the window. He’d be outside. Cinquefoil hated staying in small, still places for too long. He’d told her so himself more than once.

He had to be ill. He had to.

“But if that is the case,” Sunshower said to herself, “Why did the unicorn not say so? …And why was he so quick and terse with his words?”

At the time she’d thought nothing of it. Logic and statistics said he’d want nothing to do with her. The unicorn tribe had little love for pegasus ponies, the same way pegasi scorned earth ponies and earth ponies begrudged unicorns. Additionally, the bearded stargazer was so often distracted by his own thoughts and rarely conversed with anypony at all. He only spoke to her when it could not be avoided or if there was something he wanted from her, like this morning when he requested—politely and _quite_  extensively—for permission to investigate the lower caverns. He gave the barest minimum of interaction and nothing more.

But now, something in her hollow bones told her it was more than that.

Sunshower’s pace quickened; a staccato clip of hoof on stone. “He avoided my eye,” she told the dark room. “And he chose his words carefully…I could see them form in his eyes before he spoke them.”

Her frown hardened. She sat again.

Sunshower rubbed her chin with her wingtip looked about her quarters: at the white barding hung up in the far corner, the tin lunch pail, the sting of feathers skirting with the wind. Some dark irrational voice hiding deep in her gut whispered with the rain, soft, angry, and frightened. An unhappy noise burbled in her throat. She took her wing in her mouth and plucked at her feathers.

It started as preening, methodical and smooth. The path of her teeth wavered, she bit the edge too long, made the feathers crooked and raggedy. She gripped a tertial and pulled to straighten it, but the blasted thing wouldn’t cooperate. She pulled harder.

Sunshower flinched as the quill yanked from skin. She bent her neck to look, still gripping the feather in her teeth as pain throbbed in her wing. Bits of red flecked and dripped along the yellow.

“Shaft might still be stuck in there…must have yanked a new one.”

Ponies lost old feathers all the time, but this one was still fresh, still growing in her and attached to the vein. Sunshower loosened her grip and the wind ripped the bloodfeather from her teeth and swept it out into the storm. She watched it sweep down.

At the foot of Sill windows glowed like embers, the way they had the first evening he arrived. In the past five weeks, Sunshower had not once been absent for dinner. Late once or twice, but never absent. It was not right to be so unscrupulous with attendance. It was discourteous and undisciplined. There was still time before today became tomorrow.

If Cinquefoil was ill, she could bring him some comfort, or else bring some to herself. If not…

Sunshower fitted her helmet and adjusted her barding, taking special care to assure the wingblades were still sharp.

The pegasus tribe were poor liars, but the unicorns made an art of it. They did not simply tell untruths, they carefully trimmed details or bent the truth until it became something else.

There had not been one moment Star Swirl did not avert his eye in Sunshower’s presence. There had not been a moment when his ear was unalert. And Cinquefoil was afraid of him. It was time to find out why.

Sunshower’s wings snapped open. The rain tapped and spat at her armor as she arced through the silver-forked sky.

 

* * *

 

Cinquefoil’s window was bolted shut, the curtains drawn with a dark room behind them. This was the first thing Sunshower noticed.

The second thing she noticed was that only the kitchen window was lit. She flew over Topsoil’s house at least twice a night. In the months since Cinquefoil’s party arrived, the top left window of the house was lit. Always. The unicorn Star Swirl did not sleep at night—if at all—and let his lanterns burn until sunrise.

It took six knocks before she heard somepony come downstairs. The light from in kitchen window floated to the front door. The lock jiggled twice, thrice. The door opened a crack and Lightheart’s white face blinked out at her.

“Yes? What do you want?” Her bright voice was dull with drowsiness. Lightheart’s red-rimmed eye glanced from the barding to the bedraggled mane wetly stuck to Sunshower’s neck. “Has something happened?”

Sunshower elected to ignore the second question. “I have come to inquire of the state of affairs.”

“What about?” Lightheart yawned into the sleeve of her chiffon robe. “’Tis the middle of the night, if you didn’t notice. Can’t this wait until morning?”

“It cannot, but I will try to be brief. I have…” Sunshower’s wings twitched, fretful and uncertain. “Um. I have come to see Cinquefoil.”

The unicorn nudged the door open wider. “Do what you must,” she said. “But you know, when most ponies do this sort of thing they come through the window or stand upon a balcony. ‘Tisn’t anything romantic at all about knocking on the front door, if you ask me.”

Sunshower paid her no mind and shouldered her way in, squinting in the dim light. The rack by the door was missing an oilskin cloak. She took the stairs two at a time, wings buzzing impatiently at her side. What incompetent knave designed hallways and stairwells too narrow to fly in?

A small iron lantern burned in the corner of the hall. Sunshower brightened it some and set it beside the third door on the left, the one closest to the stairs. She paused, wondering if she was being a foolish and making a fuss over nothing. She hoped that she was.

_Tap-tappa-tap._

Silence.

No shuffling of blankets. No sleepy grousing.

_Tappa-tap-tap-tap._

No hooves on floorboards. No sickly coughing. No snoring.

She nosed the door open. Sunshower’s ears drooped as she watched the orange lantern light spill into a dark and empty room. The blanket was folded into a neat little rectangle at the foot of the bed. A spray of marigolds tipped sideways in a vase by the window. A little grey spider swayed from its thread in a high corner of the ceiling.

The rain fiercely tapped at the window, in time with Sunshower’s heartbeat. The yawning room was bigger than he described. But it probably seemed smaller to him. Cinquefoil’s scent of smoky iron and dirt stuck to the walls. He’d worn a groove in the floorboards. The pegasus prodded it with a hoof.

_‘He could have gone for a run. Plagued by bad dreams and struck off into the night to shake them off, no different than before. No different than before.’_ Sunshower’s throat tightened. ‘ _It is not an impossible hypothesis. It is not.'_

The second door was unlocked. She didn’t bother knocking this time. The minstrel’s room, too, was empty. No lyre resting upon the bed and no saddlebags on the floor. There was a wicker basket full of strange multicolored fluff near the window, but that was all. Like Cinquefoil’s, it was as if the room was never occupied at all.

The third door was ajar already. The stargazer’s room was a disaster. An unholy collage of ink splatters, crumpled paper, empty jars and ragged writing quills and mysterious stains. She could hardly see the walls, so crowded were they with a bizarre and mysterious compendium of foreign objects. Flat metal discs, strange glass orbs, coils of rubber, and stacks of crumpled metal with exotic letters she’d never seen before crawling over them.

And the window. The window was half-hidden by a great and mighty wing. A wing not of feathers or bone or skin or sinew, but of steel and iron. Sickly ivory-colored paint peeled and flaked onto the floorboards. Little round bolts studded the sides. Rust the color of old blood marred the wing and the smell of it made Sunshower cough. It looked almost… almost like...

A horned silhouette fell over the pegasus’ shoulder. Sunshower spun on her heel and pinned the unicorn to the wall, hooves digging hard into chiffon and flimsy shoulders. Her bladed wings splayed high and glimmered in the dim light.

“Where.”

Lightheart squealed like a rusted gate and squirmed against the wood grain. Her soft curled tail lashed violently against Sunshower’s hoof. “I don’t—!”

“Where did they go?! When? How? I-I saw them just this afternoon, they can’t have gone far.” The mare’s ears flattened. “Tell me.”

“I…” The unicorn’s gaze skirted over the empty room. Comprehension dawned in her eyes and she set her mouth into an indignant pout. “Oh for the love of— How in the blighted sun’s name am **I**  supposed t’know, you mad mare? Do I look like a nursemaid? I saw not a thing of them all day!”

A hard set of hooves hauled Sunshower off the unicorn and tossed her to the floorboards.

Topsoil stood over the pegasus, a candlestick clamped tight in her teeth. “That,” she said, “Is quite enough. Star Swirl hardly speaks with anypony and to Lightheart least of all. Your Cinquefoil keeps to himself and Heartstrings is all small talk and ballads. If Lightheart says she saw nothing, then nothing is what she saw.”

Sunshower rolled her shoulders as she stood. Her wings fanned wide as she glowered with gritted teeth.

Topsoil dismissed the look with a flick her tail. “See here: I don’t know what sort of quarrel you got with my tenants an’ I don’t care.” The mare stomped the floorboards so hard the walls rattled. “But touch my Lightheart again and I’m kickin’ you straight through the roof. You hear me?”

The pegasus met her stare. Slowly she unpinned her ears and tucked in her wings. She sighed, shoulders slack. “Understood. That was… that was uncalled for. And unbecoming of me.” Sunshower sat back on her haunches and gave a slight nod. “I apologize. Are you unhurt, Lightheart?”

“I think so.” Lightheart gave a soft little mewl as she ran her hoof over the robe. “You tore a seam.”

Sunshower stared at the empty room and sighed again. “You heard nothing of it? At all?” Her tail wrapped tight around her hooves. “Truly?”

Topsoil shook her head. “I saw Star Swirl and Cinquefoil head up Sill from the window and I saw them coming back some hours before dinner. Saw nothin’ of any of them since then. ‘Tis a surprise for me, too. Last I checked they were all restin’ downstairs.”

“However…” Lightheart clicked her tongue in thought. “I recall Star Swirl and his green lowland friend never spoke out in the open. All the time they were whispering behind closed doors and always stopped when somepony looked at them. And early this evening, I thought I heard them quarrel in the stairwell.”

Sunshower pricked an ear. “What of?”

“Oh, let’s see… ‘twas something about the new moon and contradictions. Star Swirl mentioned caves, I think? I don’t know, Topsoil made me come away soon after.”

“And Cinquefoil? What of him?”

“Nay, I’ve not seen him since last night,” said Topsoil. “This is the first time I’ve left my room today. Been trying’ t’put down a cold before it has a chance to start.” She sniffled a little, rubbing her nose. “What of you, love?”

Lightheart flipped her tail as she hummed. “I don’t think I…oh! Oh, yes, I saw him after he came down from the mount. ‘Twas all a-curled by the fireplace, drying off, I think. The carpet around him was damp. I lent him a blanket, poor fellow looked so tired. I don’t think he noticed me at all. He was staring at his hooves with just the _strangest_  expression. Confused…crestfallen, almost.”

The unicorn drew her robe in and glanced about the room. She wrinkled her nose and kicked aside a crumpled bit of parchment. “Goodness me, this room is a mess. And what _is_  that by the wall? Smells like old coppers and horseshoes. ‘Tis some manner of madness jangling in that colt’s head, I swear.”

“It is a wing.” The light of the lantern bent in Sunshower’s wavering eye. Her heart beat fast and she could not move. “A wing from a great metal bird with dark eyes. I have seen it before.” Outside the sky growled like an old hungry hound. Her father growled that way sometimes. She pulled her tail tighter around her hooves.

Topsoil watched Sunshower’s young face sift aimlessly through anger, bewilderment, and sorrow. “Oh, now I’m sure they’ll be back soon enough.” She pointedly ignored the coins Star Swirl left on the counter for rent.

“No. I do not think so. And I do not think you think so, either. None of the belongings are left and I...I can tell. I can feel it. They will not return. And this I can understand, but…” Sunshower shook her head and fiercely snapped her wings. Her voice frayed with her composure. “No, that is an untruth. I do not understand at all! Why would he? In the dead of night and not a word to me. Do you hear me? Not one, _not one_! My Cinque…I. I do not understand.”

The pegasus pressed a hoof to her forehead. When her voice steadied again she asked, “They were here this evening, you said?”

Lightheart and Topsoil traded sympathetic looks. “At least until the sun went down, yes.”

“Then I can catch them.” Sunshower swung out the door, her withers resolute and wingtips shaking. “I can. Perhaps they’ve not gone past the Caulkins yet.”

“Yeah,” a rough little voice said. “Oh, yeah, yeah, you can.”

“Can catch up in no time, yeah, no time,” said another.

“Hop, skip, and a jump!” cried a third. “Whee!”

The three mares looked down to find three balls of fuzz standing in Heartstrings’ doorway: red, green, and orange, all three blinking up at them with bright eyes and brighter smiles.

“Hi,” said the red one. He rubbed his eyes and yawned, “When’s breakfast?”

Sunshower blinked and twitched her ears. “In which direction did they go? Have they left the Caulkin Mountains?”

“Direction? Uh…” The green fuzzball rubbed his chin. His little hands wandered in various directions, as if remembering which was which. He settled for pointing downwards. “Went under?”

“Yeah!” cried the orange. “Under! Yeah, way, way, under. Easier than over.”

“Oh yeah, yeah,” the red agreed. “Easier, much easier. Went while the moon’s gone.”

“The unicorns and Cinquefoil under Sill…” Sunshower tapped her hoof in thought. Her eyes widened. “The elder tunnels!”

The fuzzy creatures yelped and ducked out of the pegasus’ way as she belted past them. She clapped her wings and arced down the stairs.

“Didn’t take a lantern,” the green one observed. “She should be careful in the dark.”

The red and orange fuzzballs nodded. “Yeah, careful. Real careful.”

“Could trip.”

“Or fall.”

“When’s breakfast?”

The three of them smiled up at Lightheart. “Yeah! Breakfast!”

Lightheart stared back at them. “…What are these things and why are they in our house?”

 

* * *

 

Heartstrings lit her horn again. There wasn’t much to see; grey rock arched overhead and loped on before their hooves until it faded again into the dark. Small bands of obsidian gleamed as they went by. The frail light pulsed and stuttered, bright enough to see a foot in front of their hooves, but no more.

Cinquefoil rubbed his eyes and squinted, still unused to the dim stillness of the tunnels.

 “’Tis the best I can do, I’m afraid.” She shook her head apologetically. “I used t’be better at this. Time was I could light this tunnel end to end…”

“Never mind it, Heartstrings.” Star Swirl nodded to the reaching dark. “The twists and curves are behind us now, ‘tis a straight path from here on. We can see ourselves and where we are. That’s enough.”

The bright tinkle of bells echoed in the tunnel louder than the ponies’ low voices. They didn’t know how well sound traveled in Sill. The thick walls likely kept sounds to themselves, but in a place like this, it was better to err on the side of caution.

Something here paled little ponies, made their words sickly and desperate. It felt nothing like the Roc’s eternal bleakness or Yarak’s cutting voice. No, it felt older than that. It reminded Star Swirl of the way magic eroded and evaporated in the human’s presence…something like it, but nothing like it, for there was magic here. He felt it rub against his marrow like a skinless cat. It clarified with every step: they were not welcome here. They were close, Star Swirl knew.

Cinquefoil’s hood pooled at his shoulders, his ears steady and eyes far away. Every few yards the earth pony slowed to look back at path they’d gone, or at his watery reflection in the black glass. He’d not spoken since that afternoon, though Heartstrings thought she heard him singing to himself when she brought some onion soup for dinner.

At first the unicorns worried the Mustangian was having another one of his turns; still shaken from the encounter with Yarak or drawn into himself to linger in some lightless place. But looking at him closer, it was clear this was not the case. Cinquefoil’s shoulders shook under the oilskin, but his spine was straight and his step hardy. His expression was quiet but keen and looked, Star Swirl thought, much like a human’s.

“You never answered me, by the way.” Star Swirl stepped cautiously, eyeing the rocks, lest one catch in his hoof.

“Answered to what?”

“Did you remember anything else? From before we came here?”

“Yes.” Cinquefoil blinked at the stargazer evenly. He, too, had careful hoofsteps, for he didn’t want to step on his cloak and make himself trip or tear the oilskin. “I did.”

“Oh!” Heartstrings smiled gently over her shoulder. “Did ye now? How much?”

The earth pony averted his eyes to the ceiling. An hour before they left for the tunnels he remembered the words to _Tam Lin_ , _Stagger Lee_ , _California Dreaming_ , and _De Colores_. In the space of a blink he saw stringent griffons and steel graveyards, shiny seapony skin and skinny saplings; he felt the babbling river over feet, the heartbeat of a pigeon as he held it. He felt the sure grip of a knife he knew was his and the soft, firm curve of a pegasus wing on his shoulder. It was loud, clear, and busy between his ears. It was exhausting. Cinquefoil was starting to miss the fog in his head.

“I remembered enough.” He twitched an ear and looked to Star Swirl. “Where—” Cinquefoil paused. He knew better than to ask questions he did not wish to know the answer to. “Do you know how much farther we’ve got to go?”

“Hm.” Star Swirl felt the obsidian deposits around them. His hoof came away black. “Not far, if I remember true from the last time.”

Heartstrings blinked. “Last time?”

Cinquefoil lifted an eyebrow. “I thought you needed permission first to explore the caverns.”

Star Swirl held up a clarifying hoof. “I _wanted_  permission to explore the caverns.” A scheming smirk winked at his mouth. “But that doesn’t mean I’ve not taken a spot of spelunking here and there. In any case, ‘tis ten minutes more of walking at the least.”

The tunnel fanned out ahead of them, spreading up tall and wide like a cobra hood. Obsidian devoured gabbro as the grey slammed into solid black walls, matte and coarse. In the center of the wall, there was a door. It was shiny brass once, now coated with bright verdigris that reminded Cinquefoil of Sunshower’s mane. The skull-shaped iron lock held a keyhole in its teeth.

“Oh. Or… mayhap it’s more like ten seconds. ‘Could’ve sworn it took longer t’find…” Star Swirl cleared his throat. “’Tis some manner of inscription etched upon it, but I cannot make it out. Heartstrings, bring your horn closer if you please?”

The horn’s glow cast lumpy little shadows on a belt of odd little markings in various size and shape. Larger ones scrawled beneath it in dull red paint.

“Looks a little like the runes from before, don’t it?” Heartstrings tapped at the brass, then jerked her hoof away with a yelp.

Star Swirl and Cinquefoil worriedly hovered over her until she shooed them off with her tail.

“Nay, no harm done at all. ‘Tis just… cold. _Cold_  cold, like a rock froze over—burns, almost.” She gently rubbed the tip of her hoof. “Felt it straight through me shoe.”

The stargazer waved his own hoof over the door. A biting chill radiated from the brass just as heat from a stove. “Indeed, they seem similar to the runes on the bushwoolie jar. At least, some of them do. These red marks I don’t recognize at all. Hmm.”

He tapped the brass with the tip of his horn. The unicorn flattened his ears and hissed through gritted teeth. He felt something shoot through his horn and into his chest, grabbing through his ribs with twisted little arms. Star Swirl pulled away and shook himself. “’Tis bespelled, make no doubt of it. Darkly, too. That is why it feels so very cold.”

Star Swirl shook himself again, harder this time. “A witch’s doing, methinks. I do wish we’d a human hand with us now. Surely these runes divulge the true key for the lock; some manner of puzzle or incantation or impossible task. Stars know how long ‘twill take to decipher them.” He gave a frustrated little snort. “Curse it all! I knew should have given more study to the stasis jar. Now comes the fine of folly and—and what’s that you’re doing?”

Cinquefoil glanced up from the lock. He held a little pin in his teeth, long and slightly crooked at the end. “Picking,” he said around the pin. The oilskin cloak spread out and open to reveal a row of similar pins tucked into the inner pockets.

The Mustangian had no distinct memories of lock picking (though he _did_  recall being strangled and knew it was somehow related) or knowledge of how to choose the correct pick. He didn’t have to. It was a skill learned too early and too well to be forgotten, his muscles remembered for him. The tricky part was keeping a grip while maneuvering the little hook between his teeth and tongue just so. The lock was old, fickle and brittle. It needed a gentle, clever touch.

“But ‘tis a magical door.” Star Swirl frowned skeptically. “Even if it does open by key, ‘twill be the only one of its kind and hidden in some secret compartment only reached through a series of convoluted nigh-impossible tasks.”

Cinquefoil waved his ears with the movement of bolt and pin and pick, not hearing the unicorn at all. Picking was a delicate and concise art, even with more cooperative locks. It demanded a constant touch and a constant mind. He only now realized how much he’d missed it.

The earth pony’s ears twitched at a little click between the skull’s teeth. He smiled as he stepped away from the verdigris door and nudged it open. “The door might be magic, but that doesn’t mean the lock is.” A dash of pride peppered his voice. He glanced up at the cold brass. “Besides, I don’t think a child’s room would be that hard to break into, witch or no witch.”

Heartstrings smiled for the first time that night. “I didn’t know ye knew how t’read runes.”

“Oh, I don’t.” Cinquefoil pointed at the crooked red markings. “But this part here, it’s just letters. Reads ‘ _ **DRAGGLE’S DEN: KEEP OUT’**_. He squinted where the big marks turned into smaller marks. “‘ ** _REEKA YOU BAG OF BAT GUTS THAT MEANS YOU_** ”

“But looks nothing like the language we’ve seen before at all.” Star Swirl huffed, recalling the handsome, precise lettering in the books and on the side of hubcaps. “These ugly scrawls are…well, look at them!”

Cinquefoil tucked the lock pick back into his cloak. “It’s not easy to read, no. Whoever Draggle is, she has terrible penmanship. She was either a child or a messy and illiterate adult.”

The room was dank and dreary, though not quite so dark thanks to the bloated glowworms squirming near the ceiling. It had the damp, moldy chill of a puddle-soaked sock. The dry, stagnant air smelled of tabby cat bones and cobwebs, withered herbs and rusted iron, toadskin and yellowing parchment.

Goosebumps crawled under Star Swirl’s coat. His bells jangled and echoed like cruel laughter. Heartstrings flanked him closely.

Cinquefoil went on with bold naiveté. He got a strong whiff of cobwebbed metal and atrophied plaster. The scent washed over him like nostalgia. Cinquefoil found himself missing lost things he could not name, heart drowned in foolish want and willing to make offers taller than he could ever hope to pay. (A witch’s room, reader, knows a human heart, regardless of its vessel.)

 The earth pony nosed open a little box of rat tails and hen’s teeth. “So, what is it you’re looking for?”

“’Twas forget-me-nots, the bushwoolies said. Forget-me-nots grown with love.” Heartstrings wrinkled her nose as the light of her horn grazed over a stone shelf stocked high with pickled magpie feet and fish eyes, bookended by jars of worm’s wort and frog’s breath. The other shelves were similarly piled with macabre memorabilia. The only normal thing was the bare little bed in the corner.

Star Swirl pushed aside an hourglass full of powdered bone. A scroll listing the best entrails for hepatomancy unrolled beside his hoof. “And in some sort of glass. A glass of what sort, I don’t know.”

“If ye ask my opinion, it sounds like a fool’s errand.” The minstrel flicked open a little stone box with her magic. She looked inside, went quite pale, and closed the box again. “I cannae imagine any flowers in this sort of place. None that weren’t withered, anyway.”

“Aye, I can’t either,” Star Swirl said. “But mayhap whilst going through some rebellious stage she collected up some fresh flowers. Or t’was a stunt for attention. You know, the same way well-bred fillies court mules or abuse milkvetch. Who knows?”

“She does seem to like interesting aesthetics…” Cinquefoil frowned at a mummified squirrel set up with needles to look as if it were dancing. A row of leather-bound books leaned against it. There was something else behind there. It had a listless shine he could only see when he angled his head the right way. He pushed the squirrel and the books aside to behold a crystal ball the size of a small carriage. It was heavily coated in grime and dust. A modest calf-bone stand held it up..

Star Swirl looked over the earth pony’s shoulder and hummed curiously. He rubbed off a bit of dust with the edge of his cape. A shadow waved back and forth behind the glass, the shade sliding down the side like water.

Cinquefoil tapped on the glass. Something tapped back.

“Bring your light about, Heartstrings,” the stargazer whispered. “We’ve found something.”

Heartstrings twitched her ears as the light of her horn swept over the ball. The shadow moved with it. “Nay, lad, not something. Some _one_.” She fished an old rag and set to dusting off parts of the glass too hard for Star Swirl to reach.

It was more than a vague shadow now, a blurry shape in the back of the ball, colored lavender and grey. It moved closer and came into focus. It was a mare, or something like it, for Cinquefoil had never seen such a strange looking pony before.

She was a head taller than Heartstrings with a long, thin face and tiny hooves at the end of gentle, spindly legs. Her little frame had all the robustness of a porcelain egg. Silver mane wilted at her neck, not unkempt, but dead and sallow. Warped holes wormed through it, as through moths had eaten it like an old sweater.

Looking closer, Cinquefoil saw they weren’t limited to her mane. The moth holes ran down all along her legs, the edge of her cheek, the crease of her ribs, and in the soft hollow of her throat. They bored straight through her, and the light of Heartstring’s horn shone through and cast shadows through her body as she moved. An incredible pair of gossamer wings twitched at her back, near-translucent with tiny holes running along the edge like lace filigree.

“As I live and breathe.” Heartstrings smiled in wonder. “A flutterpony.”

Ears the shape of orchid petals twitched at her. “I am.” She hadn’t taken her eyes from Cinquefoil. She blinked her jay-blue eyes at him and smiled politely. Her teeth were slightly pointed. “Little fellow, whatever is the matter? Why, you look as if you’ve been smoozed.”

Cinquefoil blinked back warily and frowned. He did not trust anything with teeth so bright in a place so dark. Glittering sheens of magic, old and dim and potent, coated her wings. Cinquefoil did not like that either.

 The flutterpony tisked. “Oh, that won’t do at all! Little pony, you must not frown so. What good can frowns ever bring? Smile instead.”

“I don’t feel like smiling,” said Cinquefoil.

 “Well, I don’t see what _that_  has to do with it. If ponies went around looking how they felt, other ponies could be offended and then they’d ask questions and get answers they didn’t want and before you know it, nobody is smiling at all. Can you imagine?” She shook her head, chuckling to herself. “Why, don’t you know? If you smile long enough, your spirit will believe, and then the smile will be real. Is that not lovely?”

The lavender pony’s smile bloated into a grin. She giggled—a sound warped and layered that echoed against itself. “So smile, Cinquefoil! Life is beautiful when you make it so.”

The Mustangian lay back his ears and pawed the mouse fur carpet. “My name is not for you to know.”

“Too bad,” the moth-bitten pony sniffed. She waggled her head with a playful little smirk. “I know it anyway. I heard it drip through the mountain like stalactite water. If you didn’t want anybody to know it, you should have kept it to yourself. Come, don’t fret. I couldn’t do anything with it even if I wanted. It is a very nice name, if it helps.”

Star Swirl put his hooves against the glass, taking in the full form of the flutterpony. “The holes are new and the legs a little longer, but for all the world, ‘tis the just same as Lady Galaxy’s scrolls. Beautiful.”

“Oh!” The flutterpony peered at Star Swirl with a curious eye. “I didn’t know Galaxy wrote. How very interesting! Are you friends with—no.” The flutterpony studied Star Swirl’s young face and the cobwebs stretching at the crystal ball’s sides like aged wrinkles. She was quiet for a moment, her grin unchanging as smile lines fell from her old eyes.

“No,” she said again. Her voice shivered. “No, I don’t think you are friends with her. You couldn’t be, could you? I’m sorry, it’s been a very long time. I forget that sometimes… Everything is the same here, you see. The room never changes, save the mounting dust. But out there, Galaxy is…they _all_  are…”

The flutterpony swallowed the rest of her sentence and giggled brightly. “Oh, look! You have her color in your mane, Star Swirl. Are you related? And how close if so?”

“I, uh.” Star Swirl twitched his ears, a little confused at the route the conversation was headed. “Four generations directly down, on my mother’s side. Five, counting my sisters and myself.”

“Five,” the flutterpony whispered. “Such a long time…but that makes sense. It takes time for a volcano to become a mountain, I think. I admit, I’ve never known much of mountains, we’re a valley sort. Or were. Son of the sons of Galaxy, what has become of Flutter Valley? Is the Sun Stone safe?”

“Desert, we believe. But ‘tis too far away and hazardous for anypony to know for sure. I don’t know anypony that’s gone that way and come back. The sun stone is either gone, broken, or corrupted.”

“Oh.” She shrugged her wings with a little chuckle. “Well, that is life, I guess. What about the rest of it? I heard the sky broke and doesn’t act as it should, but I don’t know what that means. I heard a griffon say that once when there were more griffons here. Has the moon fallen or drowned the land?”

“The unicorn tribe moves the moon along now.” Heartstrings spared a glance towards Cinquefoil, who still glowered at the flutterpony. “The Caulkins act a little strange, but the rest of the land’s doing fine, otherwise.”

“But,” said the flutterpony, “Not as it was.”

“No,” said Cinquefoil. “Not at all.”

“You looked at me with such wonder before, Star Swirl. Am I the first flutterpony you have ever seen?” She tittered and swished her tail. “If I’d known, I’d have freshened up.”

“Nopony has seen your kind since the Old Worlds became the New.” The unicorn played with his beard and offered a sympathetic shrug. “Extinct, the scholars say.”

The flutterpony laughed harder. “They your scholars are wrong. Don’t you know? All the flutterponies are connected for as long as we live.” She looked at her sallow tail and the clusters of holes in her leg. “Nothing can happen to them that does not happen to me. Nothing. The magic of this ball is strong—I want not for nectar, nor water, nor food, and age will not touch me. But even magic cannot stop my connection to the flutterponies, only hinder it. Had they all burned to death, you would speak now to pony crumbling into ash. I live, so must they. Thus, I tell you again: there is _nothing_ that happens to them that does not happen to me.”

“Fascinating!” Star Swirl looked upon the dilapidated pony with fresh, curious eyes. “Do you know what manner of spell this ball is under? Can it be broken? Or can we simply smash the glass open?”

“Hydia gave it to her daughter as a gift to practice magic on. Draggle was gifted in magic, but awful at witchery. Things in the ball were meant to decay and corrode at breakneck speed, you know, make hideous things out of what was once fair and lovely. That is their way, witches. But poor Draggle cast her spell, she got just the opposite. This ball—indeed, much of this room—keeps immortal. I was glad I wouldn’t wither away, but I felt a little bad for her. She was so sad.”

The flutterpony tilted her head at her spherical cage. “As for the crystal, I don’t think you can smash it. Not unless you have a diamond sword or some Atrophy Powder # 4 on you. Anyway, I prefer you wouldn’t.”

Heartstrings tilted her head. “Do ye not want t’be freed?”  

“Would _you_  desire to crumble into a pile of dust and bone? Think, pony! What did I just say? This ball is under a stasis spell, what do you think happens when it is broken? No, I prefer to live.”

Heartstrings’ ears drooped. “But an eternity all alone in the dark, caged and hidden away…”

“It sounds horrific,” Cinquefoil finished.

“I prefer to live,” the flutterpony said again. “And _you’re_  one to talk, colt.”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you mean.”

She smirked. “Of course not.”

Heartstrings nudged Star Swirl’s shoulder. “Never mind all of that. Ask about the flowers. If she’s been here as long as she says, she must know about them. “

The flutterpony’s moth-bitten tail swished along her chin like a lady’s fan. “Flowers?” she giggled. “What good can little ponies get from flowers in a witch’s den? You plan to offer dried up snowdrops or snapdragons to your lady fair? Because that is all you will find.”

“But the bushwoolies said—”

“Bushwoolies!” The flutterpony laughed louder. “Honey, I don’t know if anyone’s told you but bushwoolies only tell you whatever they think you want to hear. You may as well have asked a parrot!”

The unicorns exchanged worried looks. Star Swirl inclined his head and offered a humble hoof in request. “Please, madam. We were told to look for forget-me-nots. Do you know where we might find some?”

The flutterpony stared silent for one second, then another and another. Her little giggle swelled into a great belly-laugh, full and round. Her legs crumbled with laughter, barely able to stand.

Star Swirl eyed the cavern warily; Yarak would wake any moment at this rate.

The minstrel hunched her shoulders and lashed her tail. “Well, there’s no need for all that. If ye cannae tell us, then say so.”

“Oh, I can tell you. And I-I might—snrk—might know where you can find one, but I don’t think I’ll tell you.” The flutterpony bit her bottom lip, laughter hissing from her sharp teeth. “Oh, it’s just too good.”

The three little ponies looked at each other, then back at the crystal ball. Cinquefoil rolled his eyes as Heartstrings put a hoof to her forehead.

“Ah.” Star Swirl smiled a little. “Your name’s Forget-Me-Not.”

“Yep!” The flutterpony winked. “Clever little wizard.”

“Oh, but I’m not—”

“Oh, but you are. Only a wizard could have done what you’ve done.” Forget-Me-Not looked upon Cinquefoil tenderly. Cinquefoil frowned. “What a wondrous thing. And made the mountain so much more interesting. The general—you know he almost never smiles?—never was so interesting, to say nothing of his daughter. Sill has awoken, stirring, maybe remembering the volcano it used to be. And all because the little wizard took his flower to the top of it.”

Cinquefoil pricked his ears. He glanced at Star Swirl. His frowned deepened and his tail flicked nervously under his cloak.

“I am _not_  a wizard,” Star Swirl repeated. “A wizard is just a half-step below a witch. Wizards do things like keep ponies underground to dig up magic gems until they go blind. Wizards have no love for anything or anyone besides magic and themselves. Ponies don’t have wizards and they don’t have witches. We have mages and scholars, we have stargazers and soothsayers, sometimes  potion masters. But never wizards.”

“Oh, you should know better than that. Never is like its brothers Always and Forever: it does not exist.” Forget-Me-Not’s smile softened. “But if you wish, son of Dream Valley, I won’t call you that. Please don’t frown anymore. Please. I have seen no smiles in over a century, no smiles expect my own. Don’t be upset. Here, I will try to help you. Little ponies don’t come into dark places like this for no reason. Why have you come seeking Forget-Me-Not?”

“We’ve come looking for something.” Heartstrings thought again with a click of her tongue. “No, more like somewhere. We need the way to—”

“If it’s Tambelon you’re looking for, you’re a hundred years too late. Or eighteen hundred years too early.”

“Well, it isn’t. We’re a-search of a way down into Yarak’s cache of humans. D’ye know it?”

“I know many things.”

“D’ye know _that_  thing?”

Forget-Me-Not blinked innocently. “What thing?”

Heartstrings stamped. “The path to Sill’s humans, ye nit!”

“Oh, that! Well, you can’t get there from here. Not directly.” Forget-Me-Not trotted to the far end of her ball and peered over her shoulder. Her wings gently brushed her chin. “If you could, this story would have such an unsatisfying ending. It would be too easy.”

“Yes, but this is not a story,” Star Swirl protested. “This is actually happening.”

“No difference,” said the flutterpony. “What happens now will end. When it ends, stargazer, who will keep it? Songs and stories are the only things that remember. The only thing that lasts and keeps you company in the dark. But as for what you’re looking for, it’s right on through the White Roc’s nest, straight shot.”

Cinquefoil paled.

“His nest is vast, and he is so very big and the night is so dark that two little unicorns can slip past easily. You’ve seen the nest, surely? That great mass of clouds piled on clouds?”

“But we cannot walk on clouds!” Star Swirl cried. “Even pegasi cannot perch upon those clouds.”

“Nevermind that, just go on through.”

“Will we fall?”

“Maybe!” The flutterpony blithely shrugged her thin shoulders. “Or maybe not. I don’t know. I mean, it’s not like I have a crystal ball.”

Heartstrings’ expression was so flat it shamed every pancake in the Nation. “Suppose this one’s mad, or are all flutterponies naturally difficult?”

“I hear that flutterponies, like cats and teenagers, just do what suits them.” Star Swirl shrugged. “So, a bit of both.”

 Forget-Me-Not fluttered to the front of the ball, cheek pressed against the glass as she watched the ponies muse amongst themselves.

Cinquefoil quietly stared back at her. “You haven’t told us all of it.”

“True. You don’t know how to get to the nest without falling, but I do. The path is very near, but hidden. And I know where, too. Would you like to know?”

“You know we do,” Star Swirl sighed.

“Oh my, you look so desperate. My Queen always encouraged the doing of goodness for goodness’ sake, you know.” A sly smile curled up to Forget-Me-Not’s ears. “But Queen Rosedust is not here, is she? No, she is not. So the question becomes ‘What can we do for Forget-Me-Not?’”

Star Swirl smiled hopefully. “Offer our eternal gratitude?”

The flutterpony didn’t dignify that with an answer. “It is very dark in this room. And so cold. Love is warmth, but a witch’s heart has no love in the hearth, so it is always cold. I would like to be warm again.”

The unicorns graced her with bright, crescent smiles. Cinquefoil, after a moment of thought, offered a small one of his own.

Forget-Me-Not wrinkled her nose in distaste. “No, that is not what I want at all. There is no love in those smiles.”

Star Swirl wrinkled his nose back. “But just a few moments ago, you said a false smile—”

“I know what I said!” The smile dropped from Forget-Me-Not’s face. Dust fell from the flutterpony’s wings as she shook. “I know what I said…but i-it’s not what I want. You are only doing that because you want something of me. I don’t want that. Do you not understand? Please, I’m cold.”

“I know some love songs,” Heartstrings offered. Magic glazed the strings of her lyre, merry and golden. “They seem to brighten a pony’s heart well enough. How’s that?”

The flutterpony sniffed, leaning her petal-shaped ears toward the sound. “Maybe, if you sing it right. Maybe.”

The old mare nodded, plucked a few notes, and dove into _My Only Rose_ , starting strong with a simple, but sincere vow of adoration. She followed it with the clever and romantic _Riddles Wisely Expounded_ , the bittersweet _Blow the Candle Out_  and _Lily of the West_.

When that didn’t work, she dug deeper: songs of love children, for siblings, for parents, for countries and cities, for the love of summer days and winter nights, songs in love with love, and a few songs she’d made up while singing to restless fawns she’d loved as her own.

Forget-Me-Not’s smile came back. She laughed at all the parts she was supposed to laugh at, wept at the sad finales, and often hummed along with the choruses. Yet it was not enough.

Heartstrings sat back on her haunches. Several songs were left in her repertoire, but in her building frustration and exhaustion, she could no longer sing in earnest.

“Oh, try not to be so glum,” Forget-Me-Not said. “Even if it did not work, it was a very good try. Really, it was. I liked the one about the fawn sisters in the woods, that one almost did it. Do not be sad. There is too much sadness in the world. Perhaps you can keep me company anyway? I like you, and I’ve really missed talking to other…say.”

Her ears flicked up and out, swiveling like petals caught in the breeze. “Say, who’s doing _that_? I like it.”

The dust shifted and swirled as Forget-Me-Not fluttered to the top of her ball, bumping her head on the top. Her little hooves clacked at the sides as she pressed her face against the dinge to take in the sound. The unicorns turned to follow her line of sight.

It was hard to make out, at first. The song hid under Cinquefoil’s breath, shadowed with hope and bright with sorrow.

“ _Then take me back into your arms_

_If you my love would win_

_And hold me tight and fear me not_

_I’ll be a gentleman_

_But first I’ll change all in your arms_

_Into a wild wolf_

_But hold me tight and fear me not_

_I am your own true love_

_“And then I’ll change all in your arms_

_Into a wild bear_

_But hold me tight and fear me not_

_I am your husband dear”_

_“And then I’ll change all in your arms_

_Into a lion bold_

_But hold me tight and fear me not_

_And_ —”

Cinquefoil slowed to a stop and cautiously glanced at the flutterpony staring at him. It made him stomach twist.

“Yes,” Forget-Me-Not sighed. She closed her eyes, grinning as she inhaled greedily, hungrily. “Yes, _that’s_  the stuff.”

“I miss his off-key meanderin’ voice,” Heartstrings whispered. “‘Twas much better.”

“Oh, what do you know?” sniffed the flutterpony. “I like it better this way.”

Cinquefoil flicked his pink-tinged ears. “It wasn’t meant for you.”

“Yes.” The flutterpony grinned and breathed deep. The tips of her sharp teeth shone as she took it all in. “I know.”

Forget-Me-Not’s eyes were a deeper shade of blue when she opened them. The pupils were thin and slitted, like a cat looking into the light.

They stared not at Cinquefoil but behind him, towards the verdigris doorway where Sunshower stood.


	20. Bloodfeather

Only Star Swirl was surprised to see her. His ears pricked arrow-straight as the silly pink beard swung under his gaping mouth. The look lingered for less than a heartbeat before the unicorn’s face snapped back into place.

It lasted just long enough for Sunshower to know she’d ruined whatever scheme he’d cooked up. She couldn’t help a spiteful little smile. “What is the matter, stargazer? Have I disturbed your research of the habits of cavefish and glowworms?”

The pegasus breathed slow and rolled her stiff shoulders. Her muscles wanted rest after that blind dash through the dark and something in the air of this room made her blood nervous. But toss it to Tartarus if she was going to tremble before this lot. “You have assembled a large company just to explore caves. You must be an incompetent scholar.”

“Not at all.” Star Swirl blinked at her coolly. “’Tis safety in numbers when exploring new places. Caves, especially. Great are the hazards that dwell in the dark to seize a little pony.”

The gangly flutterpony of flimsy wings and full of moth holes giggled in her glass ball. “Well, is _this_  not interesting?”

Sunshower spared her the briefest of glances and whetted her glare upon the unicorns and the Mustangian peering behind them. “You have not told me the truth.” She pointed a bladed feather at Star Swirl as he opened his mouth to argue. “Do not refute me with technicalities. A snipped section of truth is not the truth. Do not offer me scales and tell me it is a dragon. Think me a brute if you will, but what I am not is a fool.”

Heartstrings glanced at Star Swirl with a frown. Star Swirl tossed his head with an annoyed little nicker, as if the pegasus had merely inconvenienced him.

“Not a fool, but sometimes mistaken.” The blades hissed as Sunshower splayed her wings flat and angled them towards his neck. “I should have looked closer. In the time I have known him, Cinquefoil has feared only dogs and dreams. I should not have disregarded the dreams. They all spring from somewhere…I know the look in his eyes when it rears up and swallows him. I know the black fog that bites at his heels at night.”

 In the corner of her eye, Cinquefoil moved. He might have said something, but Sunshower had no ear for it. She kept her eyes on the bearded unicorn and nothing else. “Not until tonight did I remember that I have seen this look—this terrible thing I cannot slay—in his eyes when he looks at you. The shifting bones, the terrible light… you have done something.”

The look in the unicorn’s eyes confirmed it.

Sunshower ran her tongue along her teeth. If she cut him down then and there it would fully be within her right. It was her mountain and her earth ponies to protect. Certainly, it would have gladdened her heart to do so, and were Sunshower under the wings of Heartthrob or Firefly, she surely would have. But she was under Wind Whistler and knew there was a time and a place for hearts, even when they crawled up one’s throat and into their mouth. Logic first.

“You are why he hurts so. If not in all parts, then in some. Tell me why.”

Star Swirl twitched his ears at the hiss of the wingblades but his stance never changed. “Aye, in part, and I don’t deny my share of it. ‘Tis a time when hurt comes with healing and cannot be helped.” His mouth flattened into a thin, bleak line. Tension thickened his noble highland accent, the ends of the syllables curling in a heated lilt. “And thy help does more to harm. ‘Tis no Mustangian before thine eye; the frightful knowledge of what once was is what pains him. Furthermore, the volume of thy voice does naught to aid him, nor I, nor thyself. Lest the aim is to rouse thy father.”

“Please.” Sunshower sniffed and flicked her tail. “He’s been roused since this afternoon and sleeps less than you do. He is atop Sill, not in it. If he suspects something, then he’s been at the ready before you came down here. Alerting him will change little.”

“Knowing Yarak, that’s probably true.”

Sunshower stiffened at the new, familiar voice.

“And I’d really appreciate it if the two of you spoke to me and not over me.”

Sunshower flattened her ears. “Cinquefoil, I can barely stand to look at you right now.”

Of course, when she felt his presence at her shoulder, she looked anyway. That look in his eye was back, quiet and cacophonous and entirely unsurprised. He’d been expecting her. _Cinque,_ _I swear if you make me cry in front of these unicorns..._

“Tell me something, herdless Mustangian. What would you have done if I had not followed you? Huh? What would you have done if I slept and patrolled and shone my armor all night instead?”

“You wouldn’t have and you didn’t.”

“Which is more than you deserve. Answer my question.”

“I’d…” Cinquefoil licked the side of his mouth and took a sweeping glance at the dank place around him. His ears drooped. He examined the inside of his pale hoof for a long moment before he looked back at her. “Then I would have come back.”

The earth pony stomped at Sunshower’s doubtful expression. “I would have! I’m the fastest thing on four legs in these mountains. I outran a pack of starving ferals, you don’t think I can outrun Star Swirl?”

Heartstrings finally brought her head up. Quietly, she said, “’Tisn’t Star Swirl ye’d have to outrun.”

Cinquefoil glanced back at her. “I can outrun _him_ , too. I’ve got twice the legs.”

“But there was no need to wait for me to follow.” Sunshower flapped her wings like bellows as she stoked her anger. “You could have said something. You could have left a message or a note or anything besides an empty room for me to find.”

The earth pony flinched.

“What was I to think, Cinquefoil? I had no idea what had become of you. You might have said something. You had weeks to say something!”

“I had nothing to say then. I can’t confess what I don’t know. You know how my head gets.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Not that I know what to say now, so I suppose that’s not much of an answer.”

“No,” Sunshower said. “It is not. It is entirely unsatisfactory and borders on insulting.” Her tail swished behind her, curling up like the crest of a wave. “But it is yours, and it is honest, I think. It will do. Are you alright?”

“No more or less than I usually am.”

“Good.” She folded her wings and sat, relaxing her tired muscles. Cinquefoil, after a moment’s hesitation, moved closer and nuzzled her shoulder. The pegasus leaned into him and let the smooth oilskin rub against her feathers.

For the first time Sunshower took a closer look at the strange room around them. She’d seen the verdigris door twice before and both times paid it no mind. (What could be gained from wondering about a door she could not open?) It was some sort of workroom or storage, just as she suspected. But for who? It was so strangely proportioned; the shelves were too tall for unicorns, too short for pegasi, and too organized for griffons. What manner of creature made this place?

Sunshower’s ears twitched at the soft breath against them. She made a face and glanced up at Cinquefoil, who just blinked and smiled at her. Sunshower swept the soft edge of her feathers along his cheek and smirked when he fidgeted.

Her eye followed the Mustangian’s smile to the swift edge of his jaw, down to his neck and stiff shoulders bunched under the oversized hood, and further on down to the long, long drag of green behind him. “Why do you not get a cloak that fits you? It would not be difficult to find one.” Sunshower tilted her head at him. “Have you never noticed that it is oversized? Three Cinquefoils could fit in there. It is very inefficient.”

Cinquefoil’s smile faltered.

“What?” She felt him grow tense. Sunshower frowned. “Do not misunderstand, I am not insulting it. The garment is well-crafted and I am sure you are fond of it, but it is simply too big for you, Cinque. The way you gallop through the mountains, it seems like a safety hazard and—”

Sunshower’s eyes caught Heartstrings’. The old mare’s face fell as if it’d been shot from the sky. Her gold eyes shone with secrets and pity and would not look directly at her. She was all but ready to wrap blankets and condolences around Sunshower’s shoulders any moment.

Star Swirl stroked his beard nonchalantly. The flutterpony smiled sweet as springtime.

Sunshower pushed away from the earth pony. “That is all I can stand!” The stomp of her hooves echoed flatly in the cavern. “There is more here than you say and there has always been. Stop staring at me like a dying foal!” She looked from pony to pony. Her voice was small and stiff. “Your mercy does me no favors. What are you not telling me?”

“The cloak wasn’t always too big.” Cinquefoil’s whisper matched hers. “It fit better before. I was taller then.”

Sunshower’s wings twitched. “Before?” She stared after him, waiting for Cinquefoil to elaborate, but he did not.

“Oh, sun and stars in a siphon!” Star Swirl flattened his ears and cut between them. “For once, I agree with you, Sunshower.” He gave the earth pony a hard glance. “This has gone on for more than enough. The one you know as Cinquefoil is not your Cinquefoil and he never was. ‘Tis no Mustangian before your eyes. Nay, not at all.”

“I knew _that_  much already.” The pegasus pawed the stone as if she could kick the conversation to a faster pace. “But there is more than that to know.”

“Yes. I’m sure there is,” said Cinquefoil (or the pony that called himself so). “I don’t entirely know what. But I can feel it—him—now, closer than before.”

Sunshower took another look at the earth pony. The muscles beneath his coat rippled, taut from strain, as if the skin didn’t fit right. His eyes pinched tight when he blinked and he fought to breathe steady. There was something bigger than fear here. “Are you sure you are alright?”

“I’m used to it.” He shook himself and waved off her concern. “Comes and goes, like I said.” He gritted his teeth and shook himself again. “But Mustangian or pony or herdless or… or whatever, I _am_  your Cinquefoil.”

Sunshower frowned. She’d known Cinque long enough to know when he was on the run.

“I am the same Cinquefoil who was with you on the hackberry and ate dinner with you in the smithy and raced you in the hills and argued over word semantics. I am the same Cinquefoil that listens from his window and smiles when he hears jackdaws because they sound like your laughter and knows that there is no sound in any world— _any_  world old or new—that has ever sounded better. I am the same Cinquefoil you have always known, the same Cinquefoil who loves nothing so much as your company and can’t understand how ponies could call the Caulkins a miserable place when you fly above them. I...” The earth pony paused to gather himself. “I’m not so sure about what I am lately. But I am sure of who.”

Sunshower’s feathers fluffed anxiously. Her face and ears felt warm and she prayed her coat kept its color.

A warbling little coo echoed through the cavern. Sunshower and Cinquefoil looked up at the flutterpony, who stared back with fat, round pupils. Her tattered wings glistened with health, spread wide as if in embrace. White needle teeth parted as she tasted the air and hummed contentedly.

“Forget-Me-Not, do you mind?” Cinquefoil snapped.

“Hmm? Oh _my_ , no.” Hiccups bounced between the flutterpony’s giggles. “I don’t mind at all! Go ahead. Please do.”

Sunshower pointedly ignored the flush in her ears and considered the flutterpony carefully. “You are the one he was singing to. Just before I entered.”

Heartstrings nodded. “Aye, she holds the key t’where we’re a-goin’.”

“And that is?”

“Up into the nest o’ your da’s Roc. This one here wanted a ballad as payment. One with love behind it.” She sighed nostalgically. “I remember he used to sing that one when he went fishing for carp.”

Sunshower lifted an eyebrow. _What would he possibly want with carp?_

“In most songs I know one of them or both of them die. Or betray each other. Or one of them is never seen again. Or the ending is ambiguous.” The earth pony shrugged. “It’s the only one I know where everything turns out okay in the end.”

“How does it end?” asked Sunshower.

“She does exactly as he asks. Janet holds Tam Lin in her arms and doesn’t let him go, even when he transforms into fierce creatures that bite and claw her. Even when he changes into hot coals that scald her skin, she doesn’t let go until Tam Lin changes back into himself. Then she wraps him up in a blanket and they go home together.”

 Cinquefoil sat back and ran his hooves through his curly mane. “But what I am isn’t what I was. I don’t know what will happen when Star Swirl changes me back. I don’t know what you will do or what I’ll do or feel or say. But I don’t really think we’ll be going home together.”

Star Swirl tossed his cape with a curt, bitter laugh. “You’ve a higher opinion of my talent than I’m due. I debated it for a time, but there is no doubt now: I cannot change you back. Not by _my_  power.”

Heartstrings snapped her head around to stare at him. “What? And just when were ye goin’ to share tha—”

The unicorn gave her a severe glance. “Hollow horn or archmage, nopony can break that basic rule of magic: I cannot move a man that will not be moved and cannot make any creature into what they are not.”

Star Swirl sighed and turned to Sunshower. For the first time since she’d known him, the unicorn spoke plain and true. “I concede. Your Cinquefoil is as he claims to be: a lovestruck little pony of the earth. Certainly, had you not followed us here he would have gone back. And had he gone back, he’d have stayed. I knew that when you came by this afternoon.”

“She was here this afternoon?” Cinquefoil’s ears stood straight up. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“For one, you were sleeping and needed to rest. For another, ‘tis as I said before, you’d have stayed. Mayhap for only a few days or a week but it is too much time. ‘Twill be another month before the moon is gone and we could risk the Roc again. By then, the situation will be more foregone than it already is.” The unicorn shook his head, resigned. “I am not a soothsayer in full. I don’t know what will be, only what might be.”

Star Swirl began to wander. He drifted from shelf to shelf, a lazy stride an unobservant pony might have called aimless. His tail trailed behind him like a wisp of smoke. “I’m no storyteller either, but I know how this one will play out.” He glanced towards the flutterpony. “Ears up, Forget-Me-Not. You’ll like this story.”

Sunshower fidgeted in her armor. Heartstrings was looking at her again.

Star Swirl wasn’t looking at any of them. He rounded a little table and examined a hollow jar of footstep dust. “Cinquefoil will know no other name, no other identity than Cinquefoil, the mysterious Mustangian from the south. Courier by day, courser by night. He will fear small, tight spaces, yet be content in his borders and fear the land beyond his fence of mountain peaks.”

Cinquefoil’s expression never changed, but his forehooves fidgeted with themselves. He kept rubbing at the strange scars on his fetlocks. Sunshower nosed his neck and slowly, he stopped.

 The unicorn’s face twinged in a smile or a grimace as he inspected a bottom shelf. It was crowded with little bowls full of broken glass and old wires. “‘Tis a soft, green grass behind a fence with life that’s soft to match, sweetened by love. Rarely will he recoil from remembered sorrows or sigh for forgotten joys. Never will he want for broken sidewalks or take comfort in the shadows of iron skeletons. He will not know the name he was born with, nor the name of his mother, nor the names of his many, many kindred still trapped behind the mountain he sleeps beneath.”

Sunshower flipped her tail as she glanced at the black walls around them, thick and stale with magic. “In Sill…”

“Aye, they will remain in Sill. But at least he will be happy, methinks.” Star Swirl’s voice was precise as cold as a scalpel. “Rain brought by pegasus wings will nourish him. Soft clouds will smother the harsh light of humanity to let him sleep. The wild-grown cinquefoil, five-petaled and bearing false fruit, will linger in the vase I fashioned. The roots will scrape at porcelain edges and never grow as they suck up stagnant water. Alive but unnourished. The human I knew will wither under his withers.”

“And I…” Star Swirl’s eye met Cinquefoil’s and looked away. He fiddled with one of the bells on the collar of his cape. It made no sound when he touched it. The ice in his voice melted. “I will miss him. Greatly.”

Star Swirl cleared his throat and turned to Sunshower. “No, he is not Mustangian. He is not even a pony. He is—was…” The unicorn frowned and flattened his ears. “ _Is_  a human. The last human left free. The rest, of what number I don’t know, are trapped in the hollow depth of Sill, taken and delivered there by the White Roc under the command of your father, General Yarak.”

The stargazer took a step back and watched Sunshower, ready to receive her reaction. Cinquefoil and Heartstrings turned as one to stare. The three ponies watched her as if expecting shock or horror or disbelief or wonder. Perhaps they anticipated tears? Sunshower didn’t know.

“What?” The pegasus twitched her ears and tilted her head. “Am I supposed to do something now?”

“Don’t ye have anything t’say about it, lass?” Heartstrings summed up Cinquefoil with the spread of her hooves. “I mean, this is no triflin’ matter here!”

“I never said it was.” Sunshower flipped her tail, a little confused. What she had to say was inconsequential. Species didn’t change from matters of opinion, after all.

“But your beloved is a mythical creature!” Forget-Me-Not squealed. She twisted in leisurely somersaults in her ball. This was her first real dose of raw, unfiltered eros. The flutterpony was warm and cozy and quite giddy from it all. “He is your mentor and father’s eternal quarry, the legend that stalks through tapestries, nightmares and dreams! The contradiction creature, the elder keeper. The woodwraith, the little lord of the earth, the paragon of predators. The augmentation of earth and adorner of ships. Grand cousin to Megan herself. Oh, and the last of his kind on top of it! O, legacy upon legacy! O, generation upon generation!”

“In action, how like an angel?” Cinquefoil smiled dryly. “In apprehension, how like a god?”

Forget-Me-Not sniffed at him. “Well, _someone_  has a high opinion of himself.”

Sunshower leaned at Cinquefoil’s ear. “Is this creature always like this?”

“More or less.”

Forget-Me-Not’s delicate wings tossed the dust into swooping spirals as they buzzed. “All the old world sweeps behind him in a millennial cape of blood and steel, stitched with ambition and dyed in fortitude. Oh, and yet all of it would he abandon for his one and only!” The flutterpony wheeled and clacked her teeth. “This is the best thing I’ve seen in centuries! Oh my land, I think I need to sit down.”

Sunshower blinked slowly. “If you are finished with the dramatics?” She watched and waited before continuing, “I do not know why you all act as if I should grasp my chest and sob like some Heart Throbbish filly in midsummer. I wanted to know the circumstances of the situation. Now I do. And that is all.”

The pegasus raised a wing to the brown little pony in the oilskin. “I did not know he was human, but I am not surprised. I knew something was strange here.” A little smirk hung on the edge of her mouth as she winked at him. “I knew no earth pony could be that handsome.”

Cinquefoil blinked with a lopsided look, as if unsure whether he was being complimented or not. “You think I’m handsome?”

“You know, Thistle Whistle called you homely and I nearly knocked her from the air.” Sunshower shook her head and laughed at herself. “It is a relief, to tell truly. This whole time I have been so worried for my honor, wondering if we would have to defect to some remote patch of land the Empire couldn’t reach or—oh, I do not know. It was silly. I am a silly pony.” She laughed again, a little worried what she’d do when she stopped. “No identity could outdo the scandal of an earth pony. How could I not be relieved?”

Sunshower’s laughter sloped into a sigh. “In addition, I have no idea what a human even is.” She nodded to Cinquefoil’s oversized cloak. “Besides that it is tall.”

“But how?” demanded Heartstrings. “Of all ponies, I’d have expected the general’s daughter t’know near everything of humans. Why, he’s kept them longer than your lifetime. Surely he’d ‘ave said _something_!”

“You have not met my father, have you?”

Star Swirl rubbed his beard. “Humans are… well, they’re an odd sort. Two-legged, mostly bald, something like a clipped sasquatch. They make things—amazing things! Carriages that drive by their own power, water that comes from walls! Fearsome weapons and at night their tall cities—they are so tall!—they light up inside as if by starlight.”

“So they are creative.” The pegasus swished her tail. “I do not see how this is different from ponies.”

“Aye, but they can be fierce ones, too,” said Heartstrings. “They conquered the whole of the land, ye know. All there was t’have. No finer predator exists, they say. And no kinder. Oh, there’s so much to say!”

Indeed there was. The unicorns went on and on about contradictions and cities and kindness to manticores and Megans and flowers knitted into manes.

Sunshower lifted an eyebrow. “That is all very impressive, but this is still nothing a minotaur or griffon or pony could not do. We can be tenacious. We can be kind and we can be cruel, though we do not like to think so. Sometimes we are both at once. It is a bit unusual to be all these things at once, I suppose.” She also had to admit she liked the sound of those braided flowers, too. “But I still do not see—”

“There is no magic,” Cinquefoil said. “Not how earth ponies or griffons don’t have magic. I mean, there is none at all. Where I am from the weather works on its own and the rocks and flowers form by themselves. Where we are, magic vanishes. Like it was never there at all.”

Sunshower’s other eyebrow went up. She was silent for a minute, then another. “Oh,” she whispered. “That is why…why the clouds…”

“That’s why.” Cinquefoil nuzzled her shoulder. “The clouds aren’t your fault. They were never your fault. Really, you’ve done a great job, considering.”

“Hmph. It is a little late for flattery, is it not? But I am glad you told me so.” Sunshower flapped her wings, struck with a thought. “But now I must know! In the stargazer’s room, there was a great metal wing. It was yours, yes? One of the things you can make?”

The earth pony nodded. “Flying machines that could go from one end of the world to the other in less than two days’ time. We called them planes.”

“Ha!” Star Swirl reared and nudged Heartstrings’ shoulder. “There, I **told**  you they knew how to fly!”

Heartstrings wrinkled her nose at him.

“Technically, we can’t. That’s why we made something that could.” Cinquefoil squirmed under his cloak as he looked at Sunshower. “But when I’m myself again, you won’t. I’ll take the flight from your feathers with a touch. You won’t know the sky anymore and either fear me or stubbornly love me anyway. I’m not sure which is worse.”

Sunshower leaned her neck to look at him. His mane hung to curtain his face from her and she could not see beyond his drooped neck. She could feel him shivering through her armor.

Too soft for anypony but her to hear, he said, “I don’t know what will happen to us.”

The pegasus sighed. Her wing lifted to curl around him, but stopped just short of contact. She shook her head and blew the curls out of his eyes. “Oh, Cinque. You have not heard me at all.”

Sunshower cracked her neck and licked the edge of her teeth. Slowly, she approached the glass ball. She hoped this would not be more difficult than necessary.

Forget-Me-Not swished her silky, moth-bitten tail and smiled. “Hello, there. Oh, what a serious look we have!” She tapped her little hoof against her chin. “My, my, what could we be up to?”

“You are a dishonest and greedy creature.” Sunshower folded in her wings and slowly blinked at her. “I do not think I like you. You have received more love than your quota demands. It is clear from the look on your face and the health in your coat. Yet you have not exposed the path into the Roc’s nest.”

“Well…” The flutterpony giggled with an innocent little shrug. “I never did say _when_  I would show the path.”  

“No. I believe it was your full intention to reveal it. I believe you would have already done so, had I not entered.” She narrowed her eyes. The wingblades rustled as her shoulders gently shook. “You are holding out for more. Very well.”

Sunshower was not a musically inclined pony. Songs were rare in the Caulkins, practically unheard of in Sill, and she held no particular fondness for them besides a detached appreciation for rhythm. The song was too jaunty and jagged, better fit for a marching chorus than a solo.

 

_“My quill and keep_

_My aerie and air_

_There is no flight without this tether_

_Mine and always_

_Always mine_

_Bloodfeather, bloodfeather, bloodfeather.”_

She didn’t sing it tender or sad or sweet. Her notes were crisp and simple, as if reading a shopping list. But Sunshower was sure the flutterpony saw the shine of her eyes and the growing lump in her throat.

“There you are, you glutton.”  Sunshower heard Cinquefoil’s hooves come closer. His eyes bored against her back. She kept her eyes firmly on the flutterpony’s. Her shoulders shook harder. “No more of your misdirections. Tell us where to go and we will go there or I will shatter that glass myself and stab you with the pieces.”

Forget-Me-Not swept her tongue over her teeth. “Well, aren’t you a ray of sunshine?”

“I am not. I am Sunshower, and that is very different. I am a pegasus, and I know my weather patterns; there is a time for sun, there is a time for rain, and there is a time for both. I have lived in these mountains all my life. I know no land, no weather but this one. I know that for a long time—a far longer time than it ought—the Caulkin Mountains have seen nothing but rain."

She spread an armored wing to the black ceiling. “It rains to such an extent, almost nothing can grow. The leaves cannot absorb enough sunlight; the roots are drowned and washed away. It has rained for so long we know of nothing else. I know the weather should not behave so. Rain may last a long time, but not forever. I received my mark upon my cessation of a flood. I know these things. I do.”

Sunshower’s feathers rose and settled. The primaries were still ragged at the edges from her anxious preen. There’d been no time to fix them. She felt a quiet, persistent throb in her wing where the tertial ripped out. Sunshower glanced over her shoulder at Cinquefoil. “I told you that you had roots and I was right. I will not see them drowned.”  

Forget-Me-Not yawned. “You really are no fun. I like the unicorns and your little courser better. They stomp their hooves and get cross.” She held up a porous hoof at Sunshower’s glare. “Patience, I’m getting to it. The Roc is through the door.”

“Where?” Star Swirl frowned. “Which door? Where is it hidden?”

“Hidden? Hardly!” The flutterpony threw back her head and laughed. “What, are you blind? _That_  door! You know, the big green one with the runes? It’s a little hard to miss, sweetie. Have you considered getting a spyglass?”

“But we just went through that door!” Cinquefoil protested.  

“You’re going back to yourself, are you not? You are letting loose a chunk of the old world back into the wild, yes?” Forget-Me-Not put her hooves on her hips. “Well, how else do you return someplace? You go back the way you came.”

“Of course.” Cinquefoil sighed, too worn for wonder or exasperation. “Of course you do.”

Star Swirl narrowed his eyes suspiciously as he approached the door again. He peeked behind the green brass at the long black tunnel they’d gone through. The unicorn cautiously glanced back at Heartstrings and Cinquefoil, who nodded and shrugged respectively.

“There we are, then.” The stargazer shook his cape off his shoulder and wrapped the threadbare silk around his hoof. Gently, he pushed the verdigris door shut.

Star Swirl flinched as something in the room shifted, like the air turning over in its sleep. It made Sunshower’s wings tired and Cinquefoil’s hooves antsy. Heartstrings’ light sputtered like a dying candle. It went dark a few seconds before the glow came back in full. The old mare had to push for it.

Mist crept through the hairline crack under the door and through the keyhole in soft, curled eddies. Cinquefoil shied away from it, still pawing at the ground.

“Cinquefoil?” Sunshower frowned. She could feel the panic mounting on his shoulders, growing denser as more fog leaked in. This could get very bad very fast. “Cinquefoil!”

He nickered and bobbed his head, eyes flickering from the mist to the four walls of the room. The stallion stomped his hooves, anxious to run with no place to run to.

Sunshower hung back and watched, sea-green tail swishing at her hooves. With a sigh, she removed her helmet and shook out her mane. Slowly, she approached him. “Cinque.”

The pegasus flattened her ears, reared back and bashed her skull against his.

The force of the headbutt knocked him into a stumble. The earth pony that was not a pony at all cursed under his breath as he steadied himself. “What on earth was _that_  for?” He winced and rubbed his aching poll.

“It became clear that words were insufficient, thus I defected to alternative methods to grasp your attention.” Sunshower tossed her mane over her shoulder with a snort. “Did you not hear me before? Must I repeat myself until I am raw? I will not have you afraid while I am here. Do not fear the White Roc or my father or Star Swirl or yourself. You are under my wing and while it is not unbreakable, it is still strong. Just as I know you are. I’ve seen you, and I know that you’re swift and bold and steadfast and brave, even if you don’t!”

She began to shake. The knot in her throat swelled to push up tears and splinter her voice. “If you have not heard me before, then hear me now! Hear an-and _believe_  me…”

“I do.”

There was a strange flapping sound and the dim light grew dimmer. Sunshower blinked up with watery eyes at the oilskin spread over and around them like a tent. Out of the unicorns’ sight. She heard the metallic chitter of blades on armor and realized she’d been trembling. Cinquefoil nodded gently to her and politely looked away.

There was a time and a place for emotional expression. This was the time. Cinquefoil gave her the place.

Sunshower’s legs buckled. Her vision blurred. The keening sound at the back of her throat was squeaky and shameful. All of this was shameful. It was shameful and unfair and had the absolute worst timing. After the first tears fell they would not stop. The blades scraped against the stone as her wings drooped. The keen came again, stretched and fragmented.

The oilskin drew in tighter, as if in an embrace. The pegasus curled up in her armor and sobbed herself hoarse.

When her shoulders stopped shaking, Cinquefoil peeked under the cloak and said again, “I do.” He leaned against her and nuzzled her cheek. It made his nose very wet. “I have to. The pegasus tribe are terrible liars.”

Sunshower coughed and sniffled. Her throat still hurt and she was getting a headache. “Thank you for that.”

Cinquefoil put his damp nose to hers. His little smile curved like a broken flower.

The pegasus wiped her eyes and wiggled out of the oilskin. Taking care not to hurt him with the blades, she set her wing around Cinquefoil’s shoulders. Her voice hadn’t recovered, still soft and ragged as a baby bird. “I will do all I can to help you. Whatever you are, whatever you have been, it does not matter to me. You are Cinquefoil and my bloodfeather.” She chuckled sadly and shook her head. “Do you not know this, you silly pony?”

“No, I knew that part.” Cinquefoil bumped his head against hers in a gentle shove that mashed their manes together. His eye blinked up at her. “I, um... just don’t know what a bloodfeather is.”

“I—” Sunshower pulled away and gawked at him. “You cannot be serious. I just sang a whole song about it!” She pursed her lips as her rosy face grew redder. “And it was an exceptionally awkward song to sing, I will have you know!”

“Well, yeah.” Cinquefoil shrugged. “But I still don’t know what it means. How am I supposed know pegasus metaphors?”

Star Swirl loudly cleared his throat before Sunshower could argue about the art of context clues and reading between lines. “This is all well and good, but our time is not infinite. Time stretches strangely underground—more so in a witch’s den, I expect. The dawn grows closer and the Roc greater.” He was not looking at any of them but at the verdigris door, mapping out the land beyond and above it. He shivered in his thin black cape. “We must away now, or not at all.”

Cinquefoil flattened his ears. He absently pawed the rug, glancing from Star Swirl to Sunshower to the inner pockets of a cloak too big for him. He frowned and bobbed his head towards the door.

“I think it only locks from the outside,” he said to himself. “Meant to keep people out, not in, so…” He pressed his hoof on the iron latch and pushed.

The door smashed open. Cinquefoil jumped back as the rock cracked against the brass. The little ponies felt it vibrate through the cavern, though the impact made no sound. The mist tossed in great rolling arcs and swelled like a bloated body. The stony path beyond it was the pale grey of the sun behind smog. Feather down the size of pegasus wings floated in the air. He nickered low in his throat.

“Wait a moment.” Heartstrings held up a hoof, nose deep in her saddlebag. Slowly, she pulled out a long object wrapped twice around in checkered cloth. It dangled awkwardly in her teeth. “I’ve got something that belongs t’ye.” She set it at Cinquefoil’s hooves. “Maybe I should have given it sooner. I was waiting for a proper time, but…” Heartstrings sighed and shook her head. “Naught t’be done for it now. And no time more proper than this.”

Cinquefoil took a corner of cloth in his teeth and pulled. Out spilled the strangest dagger Sunshower had ever seen.

It was something like a typical stiletto, but the blade was a little slimmer, a little longer, and (she was loath to admit) the edge a little fiercer than the Empire’s daggers. Dried blood speckled from the tip to the odd handle jutting straight out. No curves or tooth grips, completely unfit to be wielded by mouth and too cumbersome to be handled by hoof.

Cinquefoil snapped it into his jaws without a thought. It was a relic he knew well.

Sunshower took a small step back. The old mare was correct. It _was_  his.

She saw the bright wink of steel pull him in as the river pulls leaping salmon. She saw it catch in his throat to wrench out histories hidden deep under skin and sinew. She saw new memories fall back and recline as the old memories stretched and yawned.

The pegasus saw the bursting seams of his disguise in the curve of his spine. She saw it in the flick of his ear, the pale shade of his hoof, the sway of his flank, and the gleaming veneer of sweat on his neck. The idea that he was now or ever a stallion was not only absurd, but impossible.

The dagger was his and Sunshower knew it. She knew, because for the first time in weeks she saw that wild waterfire-shine skip along his eyes, just as it had the first time she’d spoken to him, as he observed the patchwork lands beyond the Caulkins. Yet, it was nothing like that day at all, for this time, the look did not disappear.

Sunshower folded her wings back in and put her helmet back on. “Your weapon suits you. I like it.” She gave him a wry little grin. “I trust you know how to use it?”

Cinquefoil slid the dagger into his cloak. It clinked against the lockpicks as he moved. “I do, but not with my mouth. I don’t know what good it’ll do against the Roc, weapons didn’t help much last time. But I’m glad I have it again.” He glanced at Sunshower and lifted an eyebrow. “What’s that look about?”

“It is about nothing.” The pegasus casually inspected the acuity of her wingblades. “I was just thinking that the timing is very inconvenient. I would have preferred this happen after spring.”

Heartstrings looked away and snickered.

Star Swirl frowned with a little snort. “That timing is literally the opposite of convenient.”

“Why?” Cinquefoil’s eyebrow lifted higher. “What happens in spring?”

Sunshower just chuckled. “It really _is_  your first time as a pony.”

Star Swirl rolled his eyes at all of them. He danced anxiously from hoof to hoof in the doorway. “So? Are we ready?”

Cinquefoil met him at the shoulder and sniffed at the billowing mist. He laughed as he stepped through. “Absolutely not.”

 

* * *

 

The path into the Roc’s nest was lighter than the path to Draggle’s room, though not by much. They could see through the sallow dark without Heartstrings’ horn, but not well. The rock moved in fluxing meanders; it split along the sides to form jagged gaps of air and let itself out to fat walkways or sucked itself in to skinny rails of stone.

If the ponies were very quiet, they heard the rainfall outside and rumbling thunder. There was something else too—subtle and restrained and hushed, like a breath behind clamped hands. But this was only if they were very quiet, and Cinquefoil was now rarely quiet.

The stallion that was not a stallion leaned close to Sunshower so he would not look down at the mist curling at his hock and kept his eyes on her eyes so he would not notice feather down the size of bed sheets. Louder than his thoughts and excited with old knowledge made new, Cinquefoil eagerly told her all that had happened to him. He shared all he could remember, from warm malls in winter, to bashing the attercop attacking Star Swirl, to Conemara, to the time he made a splint for his pigeons, to the way his mother made vegetable stew. Some stories were clipped and abridged, others vivid and slow. He breathed between syllables and ignored the dryness of his tongue. He took advantage of every second to speak; he didn’t know when he’d get another chance. Sunshower went beside him in a high-step trot, asking a question or exclaiming every now and again, but mostly listened.

Heartstrings and Star Swirl followed a few paces behind. The old unicorn flattened her ears with effort. Keeping her horn lit was a struggle that grew by the second. An emerging headache pulsed with the dull hum of magic as sweat ran down her nose. She gritted her teeth and tried to ignore it.

Instead, Heartstrings looked on ahead. Sunshower’s head popped up and exclaimed at something Cinquefoil said, then laughed in disbelief. He shook his head and laughed with her.

“He’s takin’ all of this well, isn’t he?” The minstrel glanced at Star Swirl. “Looks more himself than he has in ages. I think mayhap I should’ve given him that dagger sooner.”

Star Swirl was quiet, his expression intense and distant. He scratched his beard and played with his bells. For a time, Heartstrings thought he hadn’t heard her. “No,” he finally said.

The minstrel lifted her head, surprised.

“No, I think you were right to wait. Had you given it earlier, the effect might have miscarried. He was already in a fragile way when we got here, it may have sent him into one of his bad turns. Could have spooked him, made him more despondent and anxious than he already was. He’d want naught to do with it after that. Like with—”

“With you?”

The unicorn shuffled awkwardly. “…That, um... isn’t the example I aimed for, but yes. On the other hoof…” Star Swirl paused and squinted in the dark. He angled his horn towards the walls and sniffed the air thoughtfully. He went on slowly, eyes bright and busy.

Heartstrings hung back to catch up to him. “What’re ye up to?”

“I’m up to nothing.” The stargazer took another sniff. The fur at his neck stood up. Without looking from the walls, he continued, “If we tried the stiletto after he’d adjusted to his Mustangian skin, he’d have dug his hooves in the dirt and denied it until the day he died or something else dragged him back to humanity. You know earth ponies; they’ll cling to the steering wheel long after the ship’s sunk beneath the sea. ‘Twas better to try after he’d accepted it.”

Heartstrings didn’t answer him. It was too much effort to speak and keep the light going. A swift and cracking ache ran from the tip of her horn to the root of her teeth. The light flickered. Heartstrings rubbed her temple and forced the glow brighter.

Star Swirl stroked his pink beard and peered at her the way he peered at his notes or the alignment of the stars. But whatever he was thinking, he kept to himself and all he said was, “And I’d not be so quick to judge his mood, were I you.” He motioned toward the pair of ponies trotting through the mist just ahead.

Cinquefoil’s voice bobbed through the lull in the conversation. “—I mean, I’d taken creatures bigger before, I didn’t think anything of it, but how was I supposed to know that the boar’s hide was so tough? But if I haven’t always been fast, I was always nimble.”

Sunshower scoffed, “It still sounds _exceptionally_  foolish.”

“Hey, I never said it wasn’t. Anyway, the tree…”

“’Tis a good trick, to be certain.” Star Swirl’s voice was soft, his smile thin and pale. Heartstrings thought she saw empathy in it, but it looked so foreign to his face she wondered if it was a trick of the light. “However, he’s not half the illusionist Pyrite was. He knows better. I don’t think the bubble he’s built will last long. Not here.” He slowed again. The stargazer took a long, long look at their surroundings. “Anywhere else, maybe. But not here.” His beard wafted, as if in a light breeze.

No… no, there _was_  a breeze. The old mare glanced back, in pain and a little confused. She felt a slight tickle in the soft fur of her ears. Where’d that breeze come from? She tilted her light closer to the wall, where the mist was thinner.

The rock reminded her of the flutterpony: pockmarked with holes. Holes of all sizes and jagged scores of scars of night ripping all through the ceiling. If she squinted, she could barely see the stars. How could there be stars? Nothing could be seen in Sill but rainclouds. They all ought to be well soaked by now.

“Star Swirl,” she whispered, “where are we?”

“Sill, of course.” Star Swirl swiveled his ears. “Just a different section.”

Heartstrings paused and did the same. She frowned. There was no pat of rain, but she could hear water. Water moving quick and swift, like a brook or a little waterfall. Heartstrings’ twitched her nose. She smelled smoke. Smoke and another familiar smell crouching beneath it, too smothered to identify. Heartstrings groaned. The pulse of water marched in step with the merciless throb in her head.

Cinquefoil stopped and shook his head. Sunshower leaned close, her voice worried. She cried out when he fell.

Heartstrings looked back to Star Swirl. His long horn was unlit and still angled toward the wall, the lines of his face tight with concentration. He caught the minstrel’s stare and sighed.

“What? Did you think I was exaggerating before?”

Heartstrings’ horn went dark. No flicker, no stutter, no quiet wane into black. The light clapped out of existence, like a stomped firefly.

There was still light. In the dark, firelight danced through the cracks in the wall. It bobbed and swayed, the shadows swooping to follow. The smell of smoke thickened with the light pop of unseen embers.

“I cannot change him back.” Star Swirl kept his voice low. “At the top of my power, I could not change him back. Nopony could. Not here.”

A tall shadow passed over them and ducked away. There and gone again like a wisp of smoke. Heartstrings strained her ears to hear someone unseen whisper light and soft and anxious.

“Fortunately,” Star Swirl whispered, “you don’t need a unicorn to dispell magic.”

 

* * *

 

Despite everything, Sunshower found herself vastly impressed. He did not scream. Not once.

The one she knew as Cinquefoil twisted into a tight little ball, his legs all tangled up in the oilskin. His eyes squinted up at her before they rolled back and squeezed shut. His throat scratched for breath.

Sunshower’s wingblades chattered with anxious flutter as she scurried from one side of him to the other. She stared at the unicorns, eyes wide and frightened and lost. “Is…is there anything you can—?”

The unicorns exchanged looks and shook their heads.

The pegasus tossed her head and nickered under her breath. Cinquefoil jolted in little spasms in her shadow. She nosed his neck; every artery, every rope of muscle stretched and trembled like a bowstring. Sunshower sighed and knelt beside him. She laid her head next to his and opened her wings to embrace him as he trembled and groaned. Gently, she nosed his ears. It was all she could think to do.

Under the oilskin, muscles bunched and clenched and twisted and slackened and bent in ways they never meant to bend. The tunnel echoed with little pops and cracks, like somepony crushing branches underhoof, sporadically broken by a thunderclap of snapping, shifting bones.

Cinquefoil hissed through his teeth. There was a sound like wet leather slowly ripping apart. In the dim light Sunshower saw beads of blood on hairless skin. She gulped and looked away, glad of the dark.

Another groan, agonized and low. Cinquefoil violently coughed once, twice. Something wet and soft splashed against the rock. The spasms shrank into trembles. The trembles faded into twitches.

There was too much of him now to fit beneath her wing.

Sunshower lifted her head. Her feathers felt… strange. They felt wrong. They felt empty, as if she were in molt, yet the quills were still long and healthy. The feeling grew. Her wing twitched nervously, but held fast.

They could have been there for a minute or an hour, Sunshower didn’t know. It all felt the same.

When the spasms stopped completely, she lifted her wing and gave him room. He was taller than she anticipated.

A gangly silhouette dragged itself up, bent in half as the oilskin dangled under him. The tall legs shook as spidery paws braced on the rock. He coughed again, wet and thick.

The human sat back on his haunches. He leaned against the rock and wrapped the sweaty cloak around him as he caught his breath. He brushed back his wet hair—thicker than Cinquefoil’s had been—and looked at her with dark, little eyes that were somehow very much the same.

The pegasus flicked her ears and stared back, wondering where the rest of his face went. She stretched her neck and sniffed him. The cozy smell of Topsoil’s house hid under the scent of blood and sweat, and a new scent louder than the rest. It made her feathers ruffle.

The spidery paw reached out to her, naked and spindly. It was the color of Cinquefoil’s coat and blood caked under the blunt little claws. Sunshower lightly nuzzled it. The human cupped her face and gently smoothed her coat.

The human leaned in close and whispered in her ear.

Sunshower pulled away and smiled. “I like it,” she told him. “Your name suits you well.”


	21. Fire Song

The human pulled his cloak tight and shivered. His goose-pimpled skin twitched, still soft and new, slick with blood and sweat. He wasn’t sure if the chill came from the shock of his own body, still harrowed by the change, or just the sudden lack of fur.

It was all familiar, and yet so strange. As he’d grown taller, the world grew faint and hard to grasp. The cavern’s dim light was dimmer, the scope of his vision shrunk with his eyes. The human felt near blind, squinting at pony silhouettes in the feeble light. He knew one from the other by height and hoofbeats. The background noise of breathing and muffled rainfall, of bat squeaks and mouse paws scurrying along the wall; it was all gone. He’d forgotten what silence was like. Not calm before the storm or the world holding its breath, just the consequence of flat, immobile ears.

The chill of the floor soaked into the soles of his soft feet. His toes wiggled in the dirt, getting used to themselves. Four iron horseshoes lay in his lap, still smooth and sturdy, not a week off Topsoil’s worktable. The human’s left hand idly rubbed the little caulkins the mountain range was named for. The right hand rested on Sunshower’s armored back. It hadn’t moved since the change.

The pegasus sat close enough for the human to see the gleam of her eyes when she looked back at him. They were at eye level, she standing at full height and he still curled against the wall. She was so much smaller and the human could not understand it at all. He could not remember a moment when she hadn’t towered over him. Now, taller than Heartstrings but shorter than Star Swirl, Sunshower just barely reached his ribs. It was madness. How did all of that fit into such a little pony?

 “…but not by much.”

The human sat up at the sound of the pegasus’ voice. “Sorry, did you say something?”

Sunshower’s frown was practically audible. “You should not allow your attention to wander in that way. It is reckless. I was saying that Star Swirl was incorrect. You are not hairless at all, it is only that your fur is thin.” She nosed the hair dusting along his arm. “From the way you are shaking, I do not think it keeps you very warm.”

“It doesn’t.” The human scratched the back of her ear with one finger, the rest threading through her mane. It felt airy and smooth, the same as her voice.

“If your fur does not warm you then why do you have it at all?”

He shrugged. “One of our many mysteries, I suppose.”  

Something warm and soft curled over the human’s feet. Heartstrings, he knew from the stout size and the lack of clothes.

“Is that helpin’ the chill any?”

“Yes,” the man said. “But socks would be better.”

He looked out into the dark, in the direction of crisp hoofsteps clipping from one wall to the other in anxious canter. Star Swirl would wear a groove in the rocks at this rate. He had to be worried, for he hadn’t even bothered to argue when Sunshower called him wrong. There was a break in the canter and the unicorn came pattering up to them.

Star Swirl’s beard tickled as he looked the human over head to toe. “How are you feeling?”

It was not a question, but an appraisal. A question nesting many more: ‘H _ow long until you can walk again_?’ ‘ _Could you run if you had to_?’ ‘ _Are you quite aware the dawn is coming_?’ ‘ _Do you have a plan_?’ and ‘ _Was the change painful as it sounded? Tell me it wasn’t_.’

The human rubbed his calves. Propped against the wall and the oilskin draped all about him, he looked like a great green bell. “Better, I think.”

The numbness in his legs in slow decline, the man now felt his knees again, though he wasn’t sure if they could support him. His head swam and his stomach warped as his blood burned, skin stung, and bones ached. He had the copper tang of blood in his mouth and a gentle, pressing suspicion that he ought to run for his life.

 “Yeah. All in all, better than my last visit to Sill. Can you give me some space?”

The unicorns pulled away. Sunshower stepped back, but kept close.

The human gripped the wall and dug his nails into the pale rock as he pulled himself up. It took a few tries. His knees bent and shook and gave out on him more than once. Slowly, carefully, he took his hand from the wall and stepped back. He stood in an old vulture hunch, but stood nonetheless. And he remained that way. The man sighed and offered a little smile in the ponies’ direction.

“Aye, that’s a lovely sight.” The human felt Heartstrings’ smile as she nosed him. “’Tis good t’have you back.”

“Hm.” Sunshower tilted her head and stepped back for a better look. “I presumed you to be taller.”

Star Swirl sat back and watched for a long time before quietly saying, “You look different…”

“I do?” The human didn’t think he felt all that different. “How?”

“I…” The stargazer fell quiet again. His bells tinkled as he fiddled with them. Unsaid words fattened on his tongue and made it clumsy.  When he spoke again, his voice was small. Perhaps a bit sad. It was hard to tell with Star Swirl sometimes. “I’m not…entirely sure. Smaller, somehow. I think. Or lighter.” He sighed and shook his head. “I’m sorry, nevermind it. ‘Tisn’t important now.”

“If you say so.” The human looked down at himself, frowning and clasped his cloak shut. He rubbed a sore spot on his thigh and paused. The skin felt different there; rough and slightly elevated, like a scab or a scar. He felt the shape of it rise and flare out as a starburst would. Or a flower. The human drew his hand back and tried to think of something else.

“Heartstrings, was the dagger the only thing you saved?” He didn’t remember what became of his supplies, just a vague sensation of the load lightening as he ran through the city. “Maybe you found another knife?”

“Afraid not,” Heartstrings sighed. “We never saw anythin’ of your supply. I had the dagger only on account of ye dropping it before runnin’ off. Although…” She flipped her saddlebag open and nosed through it. “Ah do haff thsh,” she muffled, mouth full of something too big to hold.

The human reached to help her pull it out: a tight roll of denim and cotton, lined all over in stiff stitching. He grinned as he unfolded it. The trousers were a humble but sturdy collage of blues and greys, patched and re-patched over the decades, grown soft with time. Putting them on, they fit a bit looser than he remembered.

“Star Swirl went back an’ took it along just before we left the land with the glass tower. I expect ye were too distracted t’bother saving it.” Heartstrings flipped her tail with a sniff. “Frankly, I still cannae fathom why any creature’d bother with clothes. ‘Tis easier to move about without ‘em.”

“Easy to say for someone who grows her own coat.” The man picked a soft bit of fuzz clinging to the back pocket. “Speaking of which, why’s it so furry?”

Star Swirl looked over his shoulder. “Doubtless, the bushwoolies slept on it. They get into everything.”

“Oh. What’s a bushwoolie?”

“Annoying.” The unicorn’s beard crinkled as he sneered.

The human lifted his head. He could see Star Swirl, he realized. He could see all of them in their merry colors, features smudged by shadows. There was a muted light, the amber tips flickering on his shoulders. It was not yet dawn and Heartstrings’ horn was still dark, so the only source…

Slowly, the man turned to stare at the scar of firelight bleeding through the crack in the wall. He brushed his thumb along the sharp edge of the jag and felt warm air on the other side. When he put his eye against it, the lean angle kept him from seeing anything more than the liquid slide of shadows. He heard hushed, rapid whispers of an unseen voice…no, two. Maybe more?

His heart skipped. His weariness entirely forgotten, the human pressed himself against the wall, fumbling for a better angle, for a bigger fracture. Some way he could see. Some way he could know for certain. Eagerly frightened and with thoughtless volume he said it.

“Hello?!”

The whispers and movement stopped dead.

 “Oh...” The human blanched. “Oh, no.”

The light pulled away from him, fading into that vast place he couldn’t follow. His voice pinched into a whisper. “No. No, no, no, don’t. Please don’t.”  

The human swept his hand over his face and tried to keep calm. He helplessly looked down at Star Swirl, who looked back with quiet, busy eyes. There had to be something. Something he could do or say to make them wait, to speak to him, to look at him.

The light was almost gone.

Slowly, careful not to cut himself on the obsidian, the human wormed his fingers through the crack in the wall. The other side was soft and warm on his fingertips, with hardness underneath. Moss. He inched in up to his third knuckle and waggled the digits as peacefully as he could.

The human waited. His hand blocked the light (if it was still there at all) and he heard no whispers. His shoulder hurt from pressing at the rock. He closed his eyes and sighed.

Then he felt it. A gentle brush of skin on his fingertip. The human’s arm jerked and almost pulled back in surprise.

A voice on the other side snickered. Another one whispered something harsh.

Gentle and unhurried, the hand touched his again. A little tap on his knuckle, brushing down to the nail. The unseen fingers were slim and smaller than his own, with hangnails that poked against his skin. They wrapped around his knuckles and squeezed tight.

The human squeezed back. “Hello?” He said it gently this time.

“ _Mi bedaŭras, mi ne komprenas_...” The voice was silvery and soft. It reminded him of the blackbirds that caught grasshoppers by the library. “ _Kiom estos kun vi_?”

Another voice—smoky and peacock proud—crowed, “A-ha! _Mi diris al vi_!”

The human sighed. _Of course._  This was what he got for giving up on the language books. He knew only two languages and this was not one of them. The man rubbed his chin with his free hand, looking over his shoulder and down the path. “Hm.”

It could be dangerous. There was a strong chance it was what had summoned the Roc to the dead city before. _I shouldn’t._

The slim fingers patted his hand reassuringly.

The human shook his head, frowning. _I’m doing it anyway._ Loud as he dared—which was not loud at all—he put his fingers to his mouth and whistled. One long note, two short, and a long one again. The melody was sweet and simple to remember, a signal from the twilight of the Old World to greet and filter newcomers: ‘ _I mean no harm’_.

But there was no way to know if anybody outside his own little part of the world knew it. Maybe it was unique to his mother’s people and never shared for fear of raiders or slavers misusing it. And whoever couched on the other side of that wall did not speak his mother’s language. But humans taught other humans, and if all of them were in there, then maybe. Maybe.

He waited.

Wet and stumbling, the whistle came back to him. Five notes: two long, three short, all absolutely beautiful. A little song of fire, a candle dancing in the dark. The human felt the embers of it even as the hand drew back and the amber light faded.

The human took back his hand and rubbed his palms across his eyes. He took one last look the wall, then down at the little ponies crowded around him, silhouettes in the dark once more. He couldn’t see the mist, though he felt the damp of it prowl between his fingertips.

The long pale path unrolled before them. Eyes straight ahead, human adjusted his cloak and walked. Sunshower met his clipped pace foot to hoof, wings arced high and keen.

The unicorns came side by side just behind. Heartstrings watched the crack in the wall dilute to hairline veins branching to follow them. “How many d’you think were in there?” She asked it to herself, not realizing she’d spoken aloud until she saw the human look in the same direction.

“I heard at least two,” the human said. He had an odd expression Heartstrings had never seen before; all flash point eyes and soft, stiff lines. “But I couldn’t know for sure. Did any you hear others?”

“There might have been a third. I did hear something else moving about, but it might have been a dog.” Star Swirl flicked his tail thoughtfully. “’Tis interesting they were there at all. I’d have presumed the humans to be sleeping.”

“A night patrol was my presumption,” said Sunshower. She rolled her shoulders under her armor. “I do not know and I do not think it matters. They know you are here now, regardless. Further knowledge can be collected at a later time.”

The pegasus shook water from her ears. Gashes in the ceiling frayed to let the rain in, stuttering between a drizzle and shower. “What I do not understand is why my father finds all of this necessary. If he wished to be near humans, could he not have allied himself with another group of them? The griffons did it, so it cannot be very difficult. Or if he wanted to observe, could he not have observed them in their own territories?”

Sunshower sighed, shaking her head. “All that is accomplished in capture is antagonization and resentment. It discourages observation. It is counter-productive and illogical. I do not understand.” A chill crept up her spine at another possibility: that her father was not operating logically at all.

“Perhaps. But I don’t think any of those things are what your da’s truly after.” Star Swirl came up so they were face to face. “If it was, the bargain would be settled and the Roc long gone. Nay, he wants something else.”

“What?”

There was a pause. “I don’t know.”

“You are a liar.”

Star Swirl looked at the tattered edge of his cape and said nothing.

The rain thickened as cavern wore down. Light crawled across the rock, sallow and tepid and the color of sour milk. It was not yet dawn.

The human made an unhappy sound deep in his throat. Sunshower looked up at him, but he’d put his hood up against the rain and she could not see his face. His brown spidery hands held his cloak together in a tight clutch.

Sunshower bumped her nose against him. “It is beneficial for living creatures to breathe,” she whispered. There was a long exhale. A hand reached down and rested on her mane. It shook, the rest of him dead still.

It was bright enough for the human to see now. The White Roc was smaller than he remembered.

They had not approached the Roc, nor had the Roc come upon them. In the shift of mist, in the space between raindrops, he was simply there after not being there. For a silly moment, the human wondered if it had been there the entire time, watching Cinquefoil and Sunshower lean on each other in the dark.

Sunshower clapped her wings at the pale miasma. Combers of fog curled away, up and into the dark and naked sky. Rain hissed above but did not touch their heads. The ground beneath them was bone dry, save for the wet spots that dripped off their hair and clothes.

The Roc bent away from them, head tucked against its wing. Against the moonless, sunless sky, he was smaller. Not in size—for the Roc still dwarfed Topsoil’s house, its talons longer than the human was tall—but in perspective. Great in might and awe, still washed in that wretched, acidic aura of futility, but not incomprehensible: a gyrfalcon of incredible size, not white but bereft of color. Nesting miles above the lesser Caulkin mountains, he was a great tear in the sky. A hole in the universe. The man knew where the White Roc ended and began, for the pre-dawn sky told him so. He held that knowledge tight as he could, for he knew he would forget when the sun returned.

Star Swirl crept ahead, hoof smothering the bells as he leaned and stretched to peep around the snowy hill of Roc shoulders. It was barely visible, the bulk of the creature crowded so much of it, but there it was. A wide concave dipping down and down into Sill. The caldera of the Volcano of Gloom, now the White Roc’s nest. It tipped eastward at a slant, as if Sill wore a lopsided cap. A bolt of lightning lit the Caulkins and the unicorn saw the inner walls, hard, slick, and violet.

“Smoozed all within,” he whispered. The stargazer’s glance was brief, for no sooner did he stumble to avoid the wall of feathers rising to block the view.

The Roc clacked its ivory beak, tilting his head to the side to peer at them all. The sharp line of his wing cut the belly of the rainclouds as it stretched. Fog melted into its chest as it breathed. The white pupil flicked across inky sclera, bright as a fireflower’s flash and dark as what came after.

The human grit his teeth against the instinct to bolt and tried to remember to breathe.

Sunshower crouched low and careful, feathers full and bristling. Her ears drooped against her head, eyes flicking from Roc talons to the stiletto in the human’s white knuckled hand. He held it deftly; indeed, she believed he knew how to use it. But there were weapons and then there were desperations. A toothpick against a manticore would do better.

That dagger was for backstabbings in back alleys and slitting throats in the shadows. Sunshower frowned at the sleek line of feathers shining at the Roc’s neck. A slash across that throat—if it could be done at all—was a bleeding papercut. Presuming it even bled. And Sunshower still could not feel the air in her feathers, keenly bladed and near useless. The pegasus snorted as the Roc blinked at them again and set her hooves firm.

  The sound made the human glance down and for a second his gaze met Sunshower’s, then skipped away. He didn’t watch the Roc, nor the ponies, but Sill as it spread out wide and tall beneath his feet. Sweat beaded on his nose and he breathed shakily in the high, thin air. Watching him, Sunshower’s feathers relaxed, though only a little.

The White Roc’s shoulders rolled as he pulled to his feet. He fluffed his feathers and the little noise it made was like splintering glass. If the human didn’t know better, he might have called the Roc amused. The mountain sighed as the talons lashed out and bore down. The human brushed out of reach in a sweep of green.

Sunshower flared her wings and galloped. She flung herself high with a quick twist to her shoulder to angle the blades. She felt them pierce soft flesh of the Roc’s leg just before she fell away. It was like striking cumlulus, spongy and firm.The Roc clapped his wings as the pegasus whirled on hoof and ran for him again.

The rush of air tangled in her wings, brushing Sunshower aside in the billows of dust and grit flaring up from Sill. She sneezed and cursed and flapped to clear her sight. The mist coagulated into a heavy fog that hurt her eyes. Sunshower barely saw the green streak of human pulling away or Roc lift up and after him in one smooth wing stroke.

Sunshower coughed, squinting against the light of dawn, bright, pink, and cold.  

 

* * *

 

One knife he had. The human found it in the woods one autumn day, about a year before his mother died. He did not know where it had come from or who held it before him. It had no legacy, no history and was worthless against the Roc. Still, it was his. He gripped the rosewood handle firmly. It would not be dropped again.

The human tore down the toothed face of Sill in long, nimble leaps. His legs burned to burst into a deep-barreled gallop to take him far and away to where the Roc could not reach. But the Mustangian legs were gone and the Roc could not be outrun, out-fought, or outlasted.

Above, the sunlight swelled. The clouds dipped, fat, white, and prosperous. The man braced as the Roc pulled high into the air. His eye flicked between the path ahead and the shift of clouds above. Through the cauliflower plumes, he saw the wings narrow to an arrowhead stoop.

The White Roc plummeted. The human licked his cracked lips and jumped into a sprint. He ducked and rolled under the talons. He popped up on the opposite side, scrambling out from under the Roc’s belly on all fours. Shoulders pressed low, the human grabbed a high jut of rock and swung into a crevice.

It was not so deep to be called a cave, not so shallow for a hollow. A narrow axe wound just wide enough for the man’s shoulders. In a scramble, the human shoved deep as he could until he could fit no more of himself. The sky was a faraway scratch of pink and white in the dark. He felt the Roc’s eyes on him through the stone and took a deep breath.

He waited.

Dust sprinkled on his hood. A chunk of rock the size of his fist fell near his feet. Then another. Sill groaned. The human crouched, cloak drawn close as the walls crumpled around him. The moaning clatter of rock and rubble was better than the scream of iron, he decided.

He kept still and waited. The roof trembled.

The human rubbed the handle of his dagger and ignored the dread that iced through his stomach. He watched and did not move.

Talons punctured the roof. They did not tear through the rock as the human thought they would. The tip pierced gabbro and the roof eroded. A hundred-year process filed down to seconds. It fell away with no protest, save the crunch of gravel. A collapse easy and gentle as one of Pyrite’s bubbles against the human’s fingers.

The human swallowed hard and braced. The sunlight hit his shoulders. He bolted, squirreling over the stacks of grey and violet gravel. His eyes fixed on another bolt hole, tucked in far and away. He picked up the pace. Stones scraped his feet and cut into his palm as he climbed down and down the mountainside. He was well past the rainy curtain now, the rockface slick with wet.

Little waterfalls splashed on his back as he pressed into another crevice. Waited for the Roc to rip in after him. Off again before the gravel hit the ground.

A month up and down and sideways in the Caulkins, the human knew mountains as well as he’d known his city. He scaled Sill’s lumbering sides like fences. The bounce from rock to rock was the bounce from brick to brick; a leap of crags no different than the leap of rooftops; a skid down muddy scree was the loping slide for fire escapes. He slipped into crevices as he’d slipped under fallen pipe and rafter.

The human thought of Sill and cities and kept his eye on rock crumbling under Roc. He did not think of the struggle for breath in the high, thin air. He did not think of how the Roc blurred as his vision swam. And he did _not_  think of the screaming agony in his feet and the wet, red stickiness beneath them. Or at least, he tried.

The human leaned against a wall and rubbed his temples as the world tipped and spun. He stumbled as the Roc tore another bolt hole out of Sill. His arms shook as he climbed up and into another hollow, barely deep enough to fit him. Scrambled away again as that came crashing down. Mud and grit splattered his green coat a sickly shade of brown. Just another bit of debris tumbling down the slope.

A wall of feathers fanned over his head and the human fell back from the next bolt hole as the beak snapped at his hood. His hands just barely caught him as he fell. It took three tries to stand again.

The drizzle swelled into a downpour. The human didn’t know if he heard the hiss of the rain or the hourglass cry of the Roc. The hood slipped back and his hair flopped in his eyes, wet and heavy. He shook his head to clear it as he ran.

A coppery smell mingled with rain and sweat and mud. The ground beneath his tattered feet seized and trembled as if in death throes. Sill groaned under the White Roc’s weight. The human coughed and jumped to a lower crag, landed hard. When the rocks hit his feet, he didn’t bother to bite back his scream.

His steps were uneven, stride sloppy. He felt the chilled steel of the dagger with his thumb and remembered the last time this blade went to work; against a boar of long tusk and short temper. That had been a mistake. Little, thin, and clever, this knife was never meant for hunting, nor for fighting. It was enough.

The human blinked, bleary-eyed at the mount around him. A tiny smile flickered on his face. He swallowed the rising bile in his throat and went on. He did not see the grey figure thundering towards him.

 

* * *

 

Sunshower braced herself as the mountain jostled beneath her. She balanced on an angled precipice, Star Swirl curled up a little distance away. If the pegasus stretched her neck she could spot Heartstrings on a muddy shelf several feet below them, tight-lipped and fidgeting like a finch. She had complained of the thin air—what that was about, the pegasus had no idea, for the air seemed perfectly normal—and of unstable footing. Originally, Sunshower brushed this off as another unnecessary precaution, for everypony knew Sill was solid as the sky. Now, as chunks of mountain tumbled away in muddy clusters, she was not so sure.

A voice in the corner of her mind warned to get to safer ground, that her wings might not hold her if the cliff collapsed. Sunshower did not hear it. She was watching the human. Grousing, she beat back a column of fog with a wing. Or she _tried_  to watch the human, anyway. The fog coalesced for every inch the sun climbed, for each shudder of Sill.

If Sunshower squinted and shooed the mist at the right time and the right angle, she could see a shot of green skittering lizard-quick down the rocks. Rarely she saw him, but there was no trouble hearing him. The wheeze of lungs. The wet slap of sole on stone. The crunch of gravel when he pushed off in a leap and the cry of pain when he landed, bitten back as he moved again.

 “I cannot see.” The pegasus stamped as she clapped off another sheet of fog, then another. The air around her cleared, but there was nothing to be done for the clouds and fog beneath them and from what she could tell, the human’s path spiraled downwards. The wind swung grit in her eyes and by the time she opened them again she’d no idea where he’d gone. She heard the collapse of rock and someone cried out. “Oh! Tartarus take it, I cannot _see_!”

She wheeled on Star Swirl with a toss of her head. “And you! What is the matter with you? How can you be at rest in this inclement hour?” Sunshower was certain she looked ridiculous, muddily armored and feathers fluffed out like some capricious cockerel, but she did not care.

Star Swirl lay curled in a little depression, neck bent to his chest like a resting swan. Slowly, he opened an eyelid. “Firstly, he is your bloodfeather, not mine. You’ve more reason for alarm than I.” The eye closed again. “Secondly, this is your first time seeing the Roc at the hunt and my second. I have seen it once before and am in no hurry to see again, presuming I could see it at all in this fog.” His tail flicked under his cape. “And thirdly, I am not calm. I am still. There is a difference.”

“Pedantics.” Sunshower paced the cliff in tight semicircles, waggling her ears for the sounds of pursuit. It was oddly silent out there. “You say you saw this before. Do you believe he has a chance this time?”

“He might.” The eye slid open again. The unicorn waited a moment before saying, “I don’t like to make absolutes with humans. However…” The other eye opened and blinked down into the fog. He twitched his ears. “I think if the White Roc could be beaten by humans at all, I doubt they’d be in Sill in the first place. Or at least, not so many of them for so long.”

Star Swirl’s ears twitched again. He sat up frowning, wet beard plastered to his face. The bells on his cape tinkled as he looked about, back straight and eyes busy. He nickered under his breath.

Sunshower stepped closer. “What?”

The stargazer held up a hoof and crinkled his brow. “’Tis a shift…” His frown deepened as he angled his horn towards the sky. He shook his head as if something were assaulting it. “But I don’t see how…”

The air went warm and dry. The rain waned into a drizzle that dried up before it touched their heads.

Sunshower glanced over her shoulder. The shafts of her quills shivered all at once, spritely and alive. She felt the gentle curve of air waft through them, familiar as breath. Before she could speak of it, she jumped back to shield her eyes from the flash.

When she blinked her vision back—a haze of spots and silhouettes—the blue-white blaze still burned, albeit tamer. It flared in steady pulses like a heartbeat, balanced at the tip of Star Swirl’s horn. The unicorn kicked and wobbled to keep the light steady, as if it could fall off at any moment. He clenched his jaw and the light breathed wide before collapsing on itself, inward and inward until all that was left was a needlepoint of brightness and the telltale hum of magic.

Sunshower’s feathers splayed in astonishment. “How are—”

“Not now, please.” Star Swirl set his hooves hard, ears tight against his skull. His skinny shoulders braced and pushed up and up and up.

There was a soft pop, like air escaping a jar.

Sunshower blinked and the air was clear. The clouds shied away, lifting up and away, tugging sheets of rain with them. Mist and fog flattened as if crushed by a great hoof. A carpet of fuzzy white tendrils at their hooves was all that remained.

Star Swirl collapsed on his haunches with a sigh. “Aye, that ought to be enough to see by.” Sweat glistened on his coat and he gave her the foolish, merry smile of a lush in cider season. “Can’t break the fog, but I can move it at least.” He blinked slowly at the mist and giggled. “It worked so well, even with the Roc about! I wonder why. What’s that look about, Sunshower?”

The pegasus shook the astonishment from her face. “Magic… Y-you performed magic!”

“Aye, so it seems.”

Sunshower met him nose to nose. “But the human said magic wilts in his presence. And the weather _never_  behaves, nor does it yield to weather magic. Explain yourself.”

Heartstrings’ voice drifted up to them, quiet and small. “Star Swirl…”

“That it does,” the stargazer said. “However, as I am sure you have noticed, the human is not _in_  our presence. Still, you’ve a point. ‘Tis an oddity, the spell working so… cleanly. I expected a slow dissipation, not for it all to clap out at once. And with all of them down there, too...” He frowned at the rock beneath his hoof, then up towards the Roc and watched it for a time. “Hm. A puzzlement to be certain, but I prefer not to question fair luck. The important thing is we can see.”

Sunshower wrapped her tail around her hooves. “Yes, we can.”

The fog cleared much of the mount, all but the blankets of cloud and mist dripping down from the White Roc’s feathers. Cirrus curled behind him, pooling out like spilt milk. The ponies waited to see Sill’s familiar toothy pillars and calloused jags. It took a moment for them to realize nothing was there to see.

Muddy rubble splayed out where juts of stone ought to be. The many caves dotting the cliff face had collapsed into shallow craters, or else plunged past themselves and deep into the mount. Sunlight shone into crisp, ragged wounds ripping down the mountainside, Sill’s smoozed inner walls glossy and iridescent. There was a vague scent of moss and the distant crash of waterfalls. Somewhere, a dog barked. Then another. Then so many overlapping it was impossible to know how many or where they came from. It seemed to come from all sides. Mount Sill groaned as landslides fell like tears, trailing scars of open air.

Through it all, Heartstrings was calling, still calling, “Star Swirl, oh, Star Swirl, ye must come down! Ye must come down…”

Sunshower blinked at all of it for a handful of seconds before she shook it off and refocused. A muddy flap of green scrambled over the rubble, ducking the pebbly remains of a boulder falling from the Roc’s claws.

Star Swirl leaned over the pegasus’ shoulder. His eyebrows lifted as he rubbed his beard. He muttered something Sunshower didn’t care to make out.

The Roc’s colorless wings touched the sun. The human blew back tumbling when they came back down. A bright red trail splattered behind him.

The blades hissed as Sunshower’s wings fanned out. If a skinny little unicorn with a stupid haircut could tap into magic, even at Sill’s high elevation, then so could a pegasus. The air against her feathers was weak, as always. Good enough. She climbed the brittle current until Star Swirl grew small.

She prepared to stoop, then paused. Perhaps this was a mistake. It was dishonorable to interrupt a conflict. And Star Swirl was not distressed when he looked out, but curious. Perhaps there was more to what she saw. Perhaps he could handle the Roc after all.

The White Roc swept so low the trees splintered under its belly. The human wobbled, shaking his head. He balanced upon shivering rocks, one hand at the ground, the other upon his knife.

Sunshower’s ears twitched. Under the hourglass hiss of the Roc, over the human’s tattered wheeze and the constant tumble of boulders, she heard something else.

Hoofbeats. Coming fast.

Sunshower trembled in her barding. The hoofbeats grew louder. She could see him now. There was no shame in letting allies fall honorably, but this was not an honorable fight. It could not be allowed.

With a crack of her neck, she gathered the doubt and terror and confusion fluttering in her chest; she gathered it all and molded it, bent it over the anvil of her anger, forged it in ardor’s fire.

Little ponies under Wind Whistler, dear reader, are not lacking in emotion. Indeed, there is so much of it—tumbling and roaring and gnashing and boiling every hour of every day—it becomes hard to stand. They only wait for the proper time and place to use them. That is logic, after all.

Sunshower swept her tongue over her teeth. Quietly, simply, she said, “No.”

Star Swirl jumped back as Sunshower arrowed away, a scatter of dust and feathers behind her. He blinked at them, then out to the pegasus.

Vaguely, Heartstrings’ voice cried out to him again. Quieter this time. “Star Swirl, _please_!”

The stargazer looked to the pegasus one last time and climbed his way down.

The old mare’s voice was hushed and frantic but when Star Swirl finally came for her, she was unhurt. She was not even afraid. Golden eyes wide and wet, mane tangled as the night he met her, Heartstrings grinned.

Star Swirl tilted his head and frowned. “Sun and stars, mare. What are you on about?”

Heartstrings’ mouth opened and closed with a squeak. She tried to make words but they tangled in her throat and fell out her mouth half-made and stained with giggles. She took his head in her hooves and turned it. “Look.”

He did. “Oh…” was all he said.

The unicorns stood close together and watched.

Slowly, in pairs and trios, alone and in trains of hands holding hands, the humans trickled from Sill.

 

* * *

 

The human dug his ragged fingernails into the rock and pulled himself up. The world twirled under his feet like a tire swing. Wheezing, he braced himself and locked his eyes on the Roc’s blazing pupil as he plotted the trajectory of his next move. Not that many moves were open to him. The human didn’t know how long he could bear to stand, much less run.

The raptor’s feathers gently fluffed and flattened at his neck. He blinked once, twice. Without breaking the stare, the White Roc tipped into a lazy, circling arc. And there he stayed in stasis, circling, circling, circling without a sound.

The man drew back his hood and watched, frowning. The Roc was still on the move, but he drifted upwards, not down. The human couldn’t feel the slow burn of eyes, nor the press of clouds. His breath came back to him, slow and stable. The rainfall trickled into a languid drip. The fog cleared to reveal the crooked ridge of stone encircling him and the half-mile drop at his back. The human stood upon a plateau, smooth and warm under his bleeding feet.

Hair stood on the back of the human’s neck. He licked his cracked lips and gripped the stiletto. Nothing about this was right. This place was too clear. Too comfortable. The White Roc drove its quarry to exhaustion mentally, physically, and spiritually. A creature merciless and tireless as the ticking of a clock. So why now did—

“Rail!”

The human jerked at the sound of his name. In the corner of his eye, dart of yellow flit over the rocks. _Sunshower?_

“Rail, your left!”

Too late he heard iron clang of shoe on stone. The human spun back as the grey blur crashed into his knees. He caught himself on his hands, kicked as he rolled to slash at the heaving, flailing thing. The dragger whistled as it cut through air and into flesh. Feathers flew into his face. Whatever was on him drew back as the knife lashed out again. The human kicked the pressure off and hopped to his feet. He spat grit from his mouth and stared.

General Yarak lifted his head and peered back at him. He at full height and the human crouched, they met nose to muzzle. His old eyes, all alight with spark and fire, held fast to the human’s gaze. He didn’t so much as glance at the blood trickling from his shoulder. Tattered wings fanned like flags at his sides. Ropey muscles lumbered under leathered wrinkles. Calcified by the march of years, every joint coiled tight and ready.  

The human had but a moment to gape before the stallion came at him again. He brushed back and stuck out. Dagger clinked against horseshoe as the hooves came at his face. The human jabbed up, felt the blade sink deep and the pony pull back.

The general veered away as the human drew to full height. He kept his eye on the long, spindly legs. Hoofstep matched footstep. The pegasus dodged another dagger strike and launched. Yarak had none of Sunshower’s sprightliness, nor Cinquefoil’s swiftness. He didn’t need it. The general slammed him like a train.

The human went sprawling in clouds of grit. His raw foot scraped the rock and his leg crumpled beneath him. Hooves smashed into his side as he made to rise. The human gritted his teeth and fell back. Wings knocked against his skull. Another hoof stuck his side.

The tip of the knife sliced through sinew, into the crook of Yarak’s wing. Felt him flinch, though he never cried out. The man lifted to his knees, flattened in time to miss another hoof kick. He snatched strings of grey mane and yanked. The general’s head bashed the stone. He stumbled, one eye swollen and bloodshot as the human righted himself.  

Yarak lifted his head and twitched his ears as the man drew back. He glanced at the wounds to his wing, his shoulder, the red lines scored along his sides, and scowled. He seemed almost… disappointed. With a toss of his head and greater speed the human thought possible of the old stallion, Yarak lunged.

Hooves came down. Blade went up. Breath wheezed, coughed, stuttered as horseshoe hit stomach. The shadow of wings fell over his face as the man doubled over. A terrible pressure crushed his chest. He was certain he heard a crack. Somewhere in the flailing commotion of hooves and arms and feathers and blood, the human saw the blaze of yellow against the clouds. Close. Coming closer.

Yarak’s ear perked at the clattered hiss of metal and reared back, balanced two-legged to dodge his daughter’s wingblades. Sunshower skimmed under his hooves, a sharp twist to her back to avoid the human’s touch. The edge of her boot clipped Yarak’s muzzle as she arced up and into the sky.

Sunshower’s mane bannered as she rolled her neck. Her battle whinny, sheer and sharp and brilliant, rang over Sill. She folded her wings and stooped. The blades fanned, angled to strike. She swept Yarak again. He ducked the first blow, but Sunshower swung about and the sharp swat of her wing drove him back.

The human held his ribs and rose to his feet, finally allowed room to stumble back and collect himself. He stretched his neck to see the angry flail of wings and feathers. She moved with a swallow’s deft arc and smooth stroke, her hits elegant and precise to her father’s hammer strikes.  

Horseshoe clanged and screeched against barding and blade. Wings clapped the cob’s skull as Sunshower veered low and to right. Just low enough to catch full impact of Yarak’s headbutt to her soft, unarmored stomach. The mare tottered in air. The first kick met her helmet with an awful clang. The second caught her chin as she lifted up, too high to hit but low enough for the human to see her spit the mass of red and white.

The general pinned his bleeding, shredded ears. He glanced at the human, then up to his daughter, shaking off the ringing in her ears as she hovered. The cob shook the blood from his coat and stepped back as Sunshower stooped. She missed, skipped up and up to dive at him again.

Yarak stared after her and blinked slow and calm. His brassy eye slid towards the Roc. The clouds pooled together.

Eyes on her father, Sunshower did not see it. She clapped her wings and dove. Colorless feathers brushed beneath her. The mare’s neck jerked in surprise. Her legs pulled in tight as she darted away. She slid and spun from the dishwater talons and climbed higher. The Roc flapped and gave chase.

The human’s throat tightened. Sunshower had nowhere to go but up.

She climbed. The flap of her wings faltered, clumsy and uneven. Struggling. Her legs kicked out, balanced before the Roc’s beak snapped her tail.

She climbed. Too high.

She was far too high. Magic thinned with the air as her feathers fought to keep her aloft.

The human’s eye tried to follow her—lost in a gentle storm of cloud, feather, talon, and rain, he knew her only by the wink of sun on her barding—and cut back down to dodge Yarak’s hooves as the stallion came at him again. His knife sliced through skin and tendon. As he brushed back from the general’s assault, the man thought he saw him smile.

A kick knocked the human back. He looked up just in time to see it.

The shock of yellow. The flap of sea-green against the white and grey sky. Roc talons branching. Clasping. Crushing. The ugly, familiar squeal of metal. Of barding.

The spiral of feathers as she fell.

The human rolled from Yarak’s path and ran. He did not feel the rock scrape his lacerated feet.

But he saw the red stains where she bounced the cliff and tumbled. He felt the tremble of stone when she crashed.

He thought he heard someone scream. He thought it might be him.

The human crouched in the starburst of blood and feathers. He held the scraped, dented armor close. She was frighteningly light, despite the barding. Her snapped wing flopped against his arm. His hand brushed the soft fur at her throat. It moved shallow and quick against his fingertips. Sunshower’s head dipped to her chest. She was unconscious and deeply injured—just how deep, the human didn’t want to wonder—but alive. _Nice to know that armor’s good for something_.

Gravel crunched underhoof. The human slowly turned towards General Yarak. The old cob crouched low, watching him. One hoof pawed the ground impatiently. The dead, useless wings angled and his eye fixed on the dagger. Wrinkles still and hungry and bowstring taut. His uninjured ear twitched like a trigger finger.

He was the same as he was a moment ago. The human’s fingers twisted through Sunshower’s mane. Nothing in Yarak changed. Nothing at all.

No. No, that wasn’t true. The general watched but he did not attack. He was waiting.

Star Swirl’s words echoed in the human’s ears: _He wants something else._

The human blinked, dark eyes hard and flat. Once more, he looked around them. The flat swath of land was one of the few smooth spots on Sill. Perfect for an arena. And so much like a forest clearing. An injured, desperate human crouched beside a fallen comrade.

A human that could still hold his dagger, as another once held her bow. A human with every reason to fight, to despise, to kill. An old general who once lost a golden opportunity for a worthy opponent; a pegasus who’d lived far too long. And there was no honor in a peaceful death.

The man straightened his back. Yarak bunched his shoulders and flicked his good ear.

The human squeezed the handle of his dagger, spun it between his fingers, and sheathed the blade in his cloak pocket. He glanced back once, adjusted Sunshower in his arms, and walked away in a sweep of oilskin.

The gallop behind him was ignored.

Biting his lip against the pain in his feet, the human climbed atop a hill of gravel. It was a towering crag a few hours ago. Here, he wrapped his cloak about himself against the drizzly wind and sat.

The gallop trailed to an uncertain trot.

Gently, the human adjusted Sunshower in his lap, head elevated on his kneecap. He took care not to trouble the broken wing as he took in the scope of her injury. The foreleg under the wing was fractured but from what little he could tell, the rest seemed unbroken. Salvageable, anyway. In her armor it was hard to tell and the human knew little of internal bleeding, aside from the fact it existed. He hoped Topsoil or Star Swirl or somebody knew more than he did.

The human’s clever little fingers unfastened and removed the dented helmet. Sunshower’s bloodstained muzzle was bright against the bruises. Dirt and dried blood made her face a sallow, ugly blend of brown and yellow. Her mane was wet, but just from rain. The winds had made a tangled mess of it. Worse that Heartstrings’ mane on the night he met her. Sunshower would hate her mane to be so out of order.

His left hand would not stop shaking. He unclenched it and peered at the angry half-moons embedded in his palm. His hands needed something to do. Left to themselves, the human did not know what they would do next. His fingers threaded Sunshower’s mane and began to tease out the knots.

The trot petered into a slow walk. The walk dissolved to stumbles. The familiar scrape of Yarak’s voice shook from effort. “What…what are you playing at?”

“I play at nothing.” The human spared him the slightest of glances. “Sunshower once told me she envied Thistle Whistle’s braids. I thought she might like some of her own. Sadly, I don’t have my brush right now, but I’ll do the best I can.” He sectioned the mane into three panels and began to weave. Her mane was smoother, thinner than the bramble patch Heartstrings’ mane had been.

The general pawed the stone, as if to charge.

The human turned away. When he spoke again his voice was cold and neutral as the Roc’s eye. “I won’t fight you. I only have one knife left and I’d rather not waste it.”

“You would idly sit, even as I charge?” The cob spoke soft and ragged. It was the loudest he could manage.  

“I would. And you won’t.” The man’s eye flicked to the jags around them. He sighed or chuffed and went back to his braiding. Casually, he asked, “When was the last time you saw your mountain?”

With some effort, General Yarak lifted his head. His rheumy eyes squinted, then widened. His taut, wrinkled face went slack.

Sill, cruel crown of the Caulkin mountain range, lay in ruins. Long talon-torn holes ripped from peak to base. Light rain fell through massive punctures, making the violet inner-walls gleam. Confused fruit bats wobbled in the air and crawled over mossy rocks, uncertain where their shelter had gone.

But Yarak only had eyes for the humans. They climbed out of the cracks and perched in sets in sets of seven in the craters. They walked in dream-like trances along Sill’s surface, marveling at the sun. They huddled in the rubble with a vice grip on their children. A girl in blue chased after the fruit bats with a net, matted shags of red hair bouncing on her back. A knot of older humans watched the pair of unicorns, the unicorns watching their own cloaked human in turn.  

The shadow of the White Roc fell over them. The human tilted his head to watch it pull in for a gentle landing atop a lonely palisade. It stretched its wings and tilted its head at them, curious and impatient. The miles of milky clouds atop Sill vanished. No mist or fog lingered at the wingtips. A trail of wisp wound about its legs, but that was all. The Roc looked smaller, the human thought. Even smaller than it looked in the moonless night.

“Humans might change everything we touch, but not entirely. Not permanently; we can’t change your nature.” The man looked back to his braiding. “Hoards are for dragons, not ponies.”

Yarak flinched and sat. Dumbly, he put a hoof to his chest stared at the Roc. The White Roc preened its tail.

“It was never about keeping them. It was the hunt. ‘Until I face another. Until I am defeated.’ That was your bargain, yes? But I never understood,” the human said, “Why you ponies are so convinced I’m this magnificent, fierce warrior. Some humans are, but I’m not one of them, as I’m sure you noticed. However...” He glanced at the gathering of humans sitting on the caldera where the Roc once nested. “I don’t need to fight you to beat you.”

The human glanced at Yarak evenly, the way he glanced at rain puddles and jackdaws. "Yesterday, you asked me if I had spite for you. My answer hasn't changed." His arm drew tight around Sunshower. "I have no spite for you. I’ve no umbrage, no anger, no pity, no fear. I don’t think anything of you at all. There is nothing that you inspire.”

The human turned his back to the general. “And nothing worth remembering." He did not look back as Yarak’s voice weakened and rattled. Nor when he heard the body hit the gravel.

 

The White Roc made a sound like sand falling on sand and went aloft. En route for the top of the world and refreshed by a freshly digested heart, he was soon a white dot in the sky. The cluster of barefooted children at the caldera shaded their eyes to watch.

A redheaded girl tugging a wriggling net of fruit bats came up to join them. “Yeah, what did I tell you? The bird’s not so scary. I think your granddad was telling tales, Sato. We should’ve done this forever ago.”

Her friend, dusted in dirt and freckles, wrinkled his nose. “He doesn’t exaggerate.”

The girl shrugged. “If you say so.” She leaned over the rocks and squinted at the stranger dressed in green below them. He had a pony in his lap and his head in his hands. “D'you think that’s the one Fava heard? He’s got a yellow pony with him.”

“Might be.” Sato scratched the back of his head. “Who was that pony he was fighting with?”

“No idea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter (and an epilogue) left!


	22. Concerning Kudzu and Contradiction Creatures

Star Swirl cut the thread with his teeth and stepped back to examine the cape. He stroked his beard and nodded, pleased with his work. Gone were the meandering threads and mismatched colors, now threaded in shimmering silver lines that curled at the corners in elegant swirls. Five bells—brass, silver, iron, bronze, and copper—jingled at the collar. He’d only meant to sew the new copper bell, but then noticed the older ones needed tightening. Then he realized how frayed the edges were and in desperate need of hemming, so he wouldn’t trip over himself. Before Star Swirl knew it, he’d set to tailoring the whole thing.

It wasn’t as if he’d anything else to occupy his time. Heartstrings busied herself tending Sunshower’s injuries. In the evening, they’d talk while she made meals, but she mostly left the stargazer to himself. He’d barely seen Lightheart at all. At first, Star Swirl presumed she was tending Topsoil’s cold, yet three days ago he heard Topsoil’s voice through the walls and she didn’t sound ill at all anymore. Rarely did either of them go downstairs and they certainly never went out.

As far as Star Swirl could tell, neither did anypony else. The dull melancholy of the Caulkins was usurped by a new feeling, a mysterious unease that crept over rooftops like smoke. The mines and streets were lonely, the air quiet and empty. Nopony emerged to ask of news or spread rumors or stir themselves into panic. Sometimes when Star Swirl went out for fresh air he saw them: shy faces peeking from curtains or silhouettes leaning from a high window to stare a Sill’s broken, punctured body.

“Warren!”

Star Swirl’s ears pricked at the cry cutting through his window and went to look.

“War-ren! Come by, boy!” Next door, a lilac mare (Cotterpin, he thought her name was) stood in her doorway, hooves cupped to her mouth. A black colt watched her from the window. “Warren, come! Warr—Stoot Stain! Boy, what did I just get finished tellin’ you? Get your flank inside and don’t let me catch you at that window again! Warren! C’mon, fella!”

From here Star Swirl could see the hole dug under the fence and muddy paw prints trailing away from the house. It was an easy guess where they led. From the look on her face, so did Cotterpin. Star Swirl closed the window and made down the hall for breakfast.

As he approached the stairwell, he heard a familiar voice. “Star Swirl?”

Sunshower watched him through the open doorway. She curled in a nest of blankets, pillows, and eiderdown beside the window, tail flicking with interest. Gauze looped down her neck and withers to hug her barrel. Her bandaged foreleg spilled onto the floorboards, the splinted wing bobbing as she rolled her shoulders. “What time is it? The water clock has stopped and there is no sundial.”

“About half past ten, I expect.” Star Swirl sniffed at the dull scent of iodine and old blood as he went in. The marigolds in the vase withered days ago and nopony bothered to replace them yet. “I didn’t think you’d be awake already.”

“I should have woken two hours ago. That is when my patrol starts.” Sunshower flinched as she stood and frowned at her broken wing. “I predict I will miss many patrols in the coming weeks.”

“How are you feeling?”

Sunshower leaned upon the windowsill and sighed. “Bored. Among other things.”

Star Swirl glanced suspiciously at the bandaged leg, unsure if the pegasus ought to be out of bed. “Heartstrings said you wouldn’t be up and about for another week, at least. That was how long it took the harts to recover.”

The pegasus scoffed, but there was humor in it. “Perhaps you have not noticed, but I am not a hart. And I doubt the deerfolk wear barding.” She gently prodded the grey bruise on her flank. “It was only a fall. From sky to Sill, yes?”

“Aye, but t’was a great height nonetheless.”

“Falling is not unknown to the pegasi, I have had worse. What do you think the barding is for? Decoration? Besides, what is a ‘great height’ to a unicorn? A tumble from this low window—” Sunshower’s hoof traced the round iron window, the blue curtain brushing her bandages. “…From this window to the ground.” She stared at the vase in the corner and the grooves worn in the floor. “Six rooms in the house and you _had_  to put me in this one?”

Star Swirl shrugged apologetically. “Closest room to the stairs. We didn’t want to move you any more than we had to.”

“I would not have objected to recovering in the kitchen. But I cannot change it now.” Sunshower blinked at the sea-green braids streaming down her withers. “These are his work, are they not?”

“He thought you’d like them. He helped with the wing, too.”

Sunshower smiled at that. “Unsurprising. He told me he used to fix wings for pigeons. If he has the time for braids and splints, I expect that means he is alive and well?”

“The humans carried him into Sill after he fixed your wing and that was the last anypony’s seen of him. T’was alive and well you are, save for the shredded feet.” Star Swirl joined the pegasus at the open window and tilted his head towards Sill. “Mayhap he’s in your old room, just as you’re in his.”

“I hope not. I saw my chambers fall to rubble when the Roc chased him down the mount.” She leaned into the breeze as it ruffled her braids. “The earth ponies are unsettled.”

“A broken mountain teeming with humans will do that to a pony,” Star Swirl pointed out. “You can’t be surprised.”

“That is not what I meant. Listen. What do you hear?”

The unicorn angled his ears. Jackdaws cawed in the trees. Dead leaves crackled along the rocks while Cotterpin called for her terrier. The dim rustle of voices far above him. Finally, he admitted, “I don’t hear much of anything.”

“Precisely.” Sunshower leaned out the window and gestured toward at the sky, unbroken with cornflower blue of Star Swirl’s coat. “No rain. Not even a cloud. I think that is why the earth ponies are frightened. So am I, to be honest. We have never known a day without rain. I know it is good for the land, but…it unsettles me.” She shuddered. “To hear it stop raining is as if somepony stopped breathing. Is the sky like this where you are from?”

“Aye, sometimes, but—”

A thunderous bang cracked the silence in half.

Sunshower jumped from the window, legs splayed to attack. She exchanged a wide-eyed look with Star Swirl and stared at the ceiling. There was a smell on the air they’d never smelled before. Burning, acrid, and metallic.

Another bang. Then a strange, stuttering rattle, punctuated by pops and coughs.

“It comes from overhead,” Sunshower whispered. She crept to the window, still prepared to run or fight as she peeked out. “From Sill. But I cannot see from this angle…”

The coughing rattle smoothed into a growl, light and steady like a cat’s purr. Faraway voices raised up in celebration. Someone called out in a language the little ponies did not know and the other voices laughed.

Gravel crunched and voices called out again. The purring rumble grew louder, bolder and the acrid smell grew stronger. Star Swirl twitched his nose. The scent was so familiar, yet he could not place it.

“The humans are on the move.” Sunshower leaned until half her body dangled from the window, ears twitching in interest. “They ride upon a metal… something. I do not think it can be called a carriage without somepony to pull—ow!”

Star Swirl crammed beside her, shoving her shoulder in the iron frame and his mane flopping in her face. “A car!” He shouted in the Sunshowers’ ear. “Oh, ‘tis a real and true car! With all the wheels and gears and engines and smoke and it is _moving_!”

It wasn’t a little candy-shell vehicle like the one he’d seen in the book, nor the iron behemoth they’d found lacerated and bleeding on fringes of the city ruins. This was something in-between, covered in front and wagon-like in the back, open to the air. Star Swirl could just make out a human leaning out the front window, one hand gripping the roof. A clutch of humans sat in back, boxes and sacks of supplies strewn among them.

Sunshower spat pink mane from her mouth and smacked Star Swirl with her good wing until he drew away and let her breathe. When the ponies looked again, the rusted vehicle was gently easing down the mount, starting and stopping as the humans coaxed it to the ground. When the tires hit muddy earth, the carriage snarled and picked up speed. It hared northwest—toward North Hill, Star Swirl noted—and soon the only trace was the acrid scent of smoke and rust.

“Where d’ye suppose they’re heading?”

Star Swirl turned to find Heartstrings behind him. She stood on tiphoof, peeking over Sunshower’s shoulder.

“I do not know.” Star Swirl stared at the jagged horizon. “But they certainly seemed to.”

Sunshower drew from the window and fetched a currycomb from the dresser. “Then we will ask them.”

“Ask?” Star Swirl said. “Not now, surely?”

“Yes, ask.” The pegasus ran the comb through her coat, careful not to trouble the bandages. Her braided tail swished impatiently. “That is how unknown information becomes known, stargazer. Surely you know this. And yes, now. It must be now. I have wasted too much time already and there are things I must do.”

Star Swirl hummed doubtfully. “I can’t imagine the other humans are in a hurry to socialize…”

“An’ what of your broken bones and injuries?” Heartstrings flattened her ears. “Only just now are ye out of bed, ‘tis far too early t’be galloping up mountains.”

“A broken wing does not impede my ability to walk. If humans want naught to do with me, that is their business. They are not my priority. The only one that matters is safe and alive and that knowledge is enough. I must see to my father. I must send word to the nearest cloud shepherds. I have wasted so much time already, and I…” Sunshower’s face fell. “I should have done better.”

The unicorns exchanged glances.

Gently, Heartstrings ventured, “’Tisn’t much ye could have—”

Sunshower whipped back so fast, her braids smacked her ears. “ _Don’t_. He was my general, he was my father and he was a pegasus. I am the only other pegasus here. My tribe is not meant to live in such paltry numbers, we are all each other’s’ to sustain and to lift. We share in our feasts and we share in our falls. His failures are my own. I did not lift, I did not sustain. I tried, but I… I should have done better.”

The pegasus turned away from them and slammed the comb on the dresser so hard the mirror rattled. “The least I can do now is take him home for a proper ceremony and I cannot even do that. I must call cloud shepherds from their duty to bear him instead.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “Come along or do not. I am going.”

Heartstrings rubbed her temples. “Aye, that much ye’ve made clear.” She gestured to the steaming oatmeal at her hooves. “But at least do me the kindness of eating before leaving. Somehow, I doubt collapsing on the rocks helps anything get done faster.”

Sunshower’s shoulders relaxed. “That much, at least, I will do.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Two humans stood guard. The first met them at Sill’s midpoint, pale in eyes and hair and skin, her gaze shrewd and calm. Her hair curled around her ears, barely brushing her shoulders. The second one, darker than the first but lighter than Rail, perched on a shelf of gabbro several yards above her and had no hair at all. Both had rifles strapped to their backs.

The pale guard’s eyes skimmed the ponies from tip to tail, at their big bright eyes, candy colored coats and worn saddlebags. She frowned.

Sunshower’s shoulders set firm and she frowned back, sizing up the guard in turn.

Star Swirl fidgeted, glancing from the rifle to the leather vest to a gap in the rocks leading into Sill. His ears twitched at faraway chattering and moving water.

Heartstrings beamed and held out her right hoof. “G’morrow, lass! My name is Heartstrings, who are you?”

The guard blinked in surprise. Whatever she’d expected of the little ponies, this clearly wasn’t it.

Heartstrings looked at her outstretched hoof and her smile faltered. “Oh, dear. I did I wrong didn’t I? I thought I was t’shake hands, but that’s a wee bit difficult without hands to shake.”

“Uh. A little, yes.” The human’s gloved hand shook the hoof anyway. “Good morning, I am Anais. Rail told us to expect you, but we didn’t think all three would come at once.”

“How is he?” Star Swirl asked.

“Well enough, far as I could tell. From the beard and horn, I take it you’re Star Swirl?”

The unicorn’s ear twitched uncertainly. “Aye, that I am.”

“It’s one at a time in the infirmary. He wants you to go last.” To the others she said, “I’m to escort you to the piazza, where you will wait and make no trouble.”

“I must attend to my father first.” When Anais frowned in confusion, Sunshower’s good wing gestured toward the mountaintop. “He is a pegasus, like I am. He is still up there, is he not?”

“Ah. You’ll find his remains under a blanket near the caldera. We thought of tending to him ourselves, but Hark and Pruitt told us your kind don’t bury your dead.” The guard offered a wry smile. “We got plenty to worry about already. Don’t need a stallion haunting us on top of it because we messed up the funeral rites. I’ll tell Idris to let you pass and do what you must.”

Sunshower nodded and limped her way up the mountain, biting back a wince as she went.

Anais glanced at Heartstrings, who still stared up at her. “What?”

“I like your hair. I didnae know humans cut it that way.”

The guard chuckled under her breath. “Weird little things, you are.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Star Swirl shook the water from his beard and lifted his muzzle from the little waterfall. It was one of many, the middle stretch for Sill’s many waterfalls and runoffs. The falls fed a sparkling stream that wound through a pen of goats and pigs.

A nanny goat bleated at him through a fence of twisted wire, cables and wood. She sniffed at Star Swirl with a crusty nose and the unicorn stepped back from her. There was something in that goat—in _all_  the goats—that didn’t sit right in his stomach.

When he’d asked them of life with Sill’s humans, or commented on the fresh grass, or complimented their kids, there was no response. And it wasn’t consequence of the language barrier, either. The goats hadn’t responded at _all_. They didn’t lift their ears or heads to him. No side glances. No smiles. No frowns. Nothing. Their bahs and bleats had no cadence or structure, no rhythm of language. The goats chewed their grass and stared into space with dead, glassy eyes.

It was not just the goats. The unicorn saw it in the pigs, the dogs, the mice, the rabbits in their wire cages and the swallows in the cliffs. The brightness found the in eyes of wildlife native to the Nation and Kingdom was completely absent. Only the fruit bats and a handful of dogs—Cotterpin’s grey terrier among them—were familiar to him (maybe the cats too, but it was always hard to tell with cats). Star Swirl recalled the human’s rule of never eating talking creatures. He wondered if there was another reason the deerfolk caught in his city never spoke.

The unicorn sniffed the grass at his hooves. Legends said food from human realms changed a pony, either made all other food taste like wax and ashes, or else become so enraptured you’d stay there forever, eating and eating until your belly burst. Just legends, of course. All the same, Star Swirl decided to wait until he was back at Topsoil’s to eat.

The piazza, as the humans called it, composed the bulk of Sill’s bottom layer; a yawning oval grassland marked by andesite plateaus. The moss and grasses were bright and lush, feathergrass soft, fed by constant Caulkin rain. Spotlights of sunshine dripped down from the caldera, the toothed caverns, and all the rips and scars torn by the Roc. The crisp air was damp with life and promise, the way the world was after rainfall.

On the far side of the piazza, he saw lines of talon-scarred buildings that ranged from squat cottages to proud mansions to chunks of concrete towers to the humble lean-tos built from scavenged wood and metals. Not content with the ground, structures climbed the walls, perched on cliffs and shelves and humans skimmed the sturdy net bridges that connected them. And the mountain still had plenty of room to spare. He’d lived in the mountain’s shadow for months, traveled up and down its sides scores of times, but Star Swirl didn’t truly appreciate the mammoth scope of Sill until he was inside it.

Star Swirl stopped to examine the crisscross of footprints running along the streambed. The sizes surprised him, for he never imagined human feet could be so small. The patterns they took were fascinating. Here, someone dragged themselves slow and over there, someone had sprinted. Just beyond that, two pairs of prints interwove, as if dancing. Rows of water-stained buckets and barrels ran along the bank, along with makeshift sieves and ropes and tightly woven nets.

A little sailboat bobbed at Star Swirl’s hooves, the capsized hull was bright yellow. The toy floated in the shadow of the real thing: an off white schooner with tattered sails and a cracked mast. The stargazer heard the tell-tale smack of feet on floorboards inside, the quiet pad of adults and the careless stomp of children. Eyes peeked through fishnet curtains, ducking in when they saw him looking back. The schooner was in good company. Several other ships crowded it: proud luxury liners, sleek motorboats, and a stoic iron behemoth lay split in half, thick furs thrown over Roc-torn gashes for privacy. A pair of dinghies sheltered a vegetable garden.

The boats were impressive, but the vehicles outnumbered them twenty to one. While buildings and boats huddled close, the automated carriages spread hither and thither, above and below and every place in-between, as if someone had thrown them out like festival garlands. Sun-bleached busses simmered on high ledges, limousines lounged in the shade, and little sedans flocked in multicolored clusters. All of their doors and windows spread wide open as humans sat on the seats, hoods, trunks, and rooftops. In one of them, a quartet of middle-aged men and women wove nets.

Star Swirl recognized these humans from the outpouring of Sill and lifted his hoof to them. A man with a yellow beard and yellow teeth waved back. It was the only real acknowledgement he’d received so far.

Certainly, the humans of Sill were not hiding—everywhere he looked they climbed and fished and laughed and timidly explored the bold new world outside the walls of moss and smooze—but they gave Star Swirl a wide berth and took no steps to approach him. Chatter whittled to whispers when the unicorn went by. He was pointedly ignored or watched from a safe distance by almost everyone. Everyone except one particular group.

Star Swirl was no expert in human ages, but they looked and acted half-grown, if not in adolescence, then at the cusp of it. People too young for fear and too old for reprimand. They had followed him since he arrived, always just out of reach as they flitted like horseflies, laughing and whispering in low voices. The bold ones snuck up behind when Star Swirl wasn’t looking and snatched pink hairs from his tail. When the unicorn didn’t retaliate, the whispering eased into regular chatter. He didn’t know the language, but it had the prickly, quick cadence of griffon linguistics.

The unicorn only recognized one word and he heard the word breach in conversation many times: ‘kudzu’. It was not restricted to the young humans, either. He heard it from doors and windows, in passing dialogues as they strolled overhead. Star Swirl thought he even saw it in their sign language, represented in a hand spidering along the arm like climbing vines. Yet he could see no kudzu vines in the foliage at all. It was all very curious.

When Anais returned, Sunshower limping at her side, Star Swirl asked about it.

The guard blinked quickly and rubbed the back of her neck. “Kudzu is a type of vine,” she said a little too quickly.

“Aye, I know that part. We passed one of your cities some months ago and saw them climb o’er your rusted towers and streetlamps. You see them in all the ruins.”

“Did you also know the kudzu vine didn’t always grow on this continent?”

The unicorn rubbed his beard inquisitively and looked behind him. A young man with dreadlocks narrowed his eyes at him from the shadows. “I didn’t.”

“Kudzu was brought from across the sea, and it took well to the foreign soil and favorable climate. So well that soon it choked the life out of what already lived there, all the native trees and things.”

Sunshower flicked her tail impatiently. “The biology of vines is interesting, but the stargazer is correct. The walls have only moss. There is no kudzu here at all.”

Anais looked at the dew on Sunshower’s feathers, the sun glinting off Star Swirl’s horn. “…Some would disagree with you.”

“Oh?” Star Swirl blinked once, then twice. He looked at the humans in their broken buildings and rusted cars, then at himself. Slowly, his ears drooped. “…Oh.”

The guard shrugged sympathetically. “Nothing personal.” She pointed westward, to an iron bird-like machine half-covered in sunshine. A green pony hopped down makeshift stairs trailing from a great gap where a wing used to be. “You can go in now, Sunshower. The other unicorn’s come out.”

The pegasus stared at the iron bird and didn’t respond. Something climbed on the roof, moving slow with a flap green trailing behind. Sunshower’s good wing pulled in tight at her shoulder. She nickered low in her throat.

“We could wait a little bit, if you like,” Anais offered.

“No.” Sunshower ran her teeth along her feathers and stood. “No, I am ready now.”  

Star Swirl trailed their approach. The guard looked over her shoulder at him, but didn’t argue against him coming along. “If you don’t mind my asking, what is the name of that great iron bird? Is that a…” He struggled to remember the word. “A plane? Why is it the infirmary? Why not use a building?”

“The plane’s easy to get in an’ out of, and easy to guard. Hark says its name is… Boeing, I think. We just call it the infirmary.” The guard looked over her shoulder.

The young humans from before shadowed them on all sides. Together they murmured and pointed at the green figure on the plane’s roof. They snickered as Star Swirl edged away from them.

Anais wheeled on the group and they fluttered back like crows. “Don’t you have work to do? If ya’ll ran out, I know Igoe can dig some up. Leave the ponies alone and go bother somebody else.” She jabbed her thumb over her shoulder. “What, you deaf? Scat!”

The band of humans scattered, but two lingered behind: the young man with dreadlocks, his hands jammed in his pockets, and a red-haired girl who sat cross-legged upon a plateau.

The boy frowned defiantly. “Drags said that the lil’ ponies—”

“Do I look like I care what Drags says?” The guard crossed her arms and met his stare. “Drags is a pile of bones and ashes. Anais is alive and has a rifle on her back. Which one you want to listen to? I won’t tell you again: leave the ponies alone.”  

The young man hesitated. Anais glowered. He broke her gaze and skulked away.

The girl pulled in her legs and rested her head on her knees. She was young, younger than the others had been, but somehow didn’t seem it. Her matted hair was not the dull, coppery red Star Swirl saw in the other humans. Bright as a pony’s coat, it was the red of fresh wounds and sunsets and razed houses.

The cut of her blue eyes pricked the fur along the unicorn’s spine. Sunshower kept her face and posture nonchalant, but her good wing splayed for battle. She breathed light and quick.

“That one is not like the others,” Sunshower whispered.

The girl smiled. Her teeth glinted like attercop silk.

Star Swirl stepped back and tried not to cringe. “No, she is not.” There was coldness there, twisting through her fingers and sliding across her palms in thin, clammy tendrils. The same chill of the verdigris door. Star Swirl flattened his ears.

The girl smiled wider.

Anais pointed a stubby finger. “Make no trouble, Ashling. You hear me?”

The red-haired girl rolled her eyes and put her head in her hands. When Anais wasn’t looking, she stuck her tongue out.

Heartstrings met the group as they neared the plane. She walked in slow, cautious steps and she, too, watched the one called Ashling. “I saw that one before,” she told Star Swirl. “Outside the windows. Ye felt it too, right?”

Star Swirl nodded. “Magic.”

“But humans cannae use magic.”

“No,” Anais said. “Not if they want to stay that way.” She rubbed the back of her neck and glanced at the plateau. Ashling was gone. “Not all humans are from the same Old World. There’s those that look human but aren’t and they live longer than we do. Long enough to pass down their arts.” She sighed, her smile bitter and small. “Witches are made, not born.”

Sunshower loudly cleared her throat. She balanced on the rickety stairwell, her bad leg pulled close to her chest. “Assistance would not be unwelcomed.”

The guard nodded and helped the pegasus up the stairs. They vanished into the plane and in a few minutes Sunshower reemerged on the roof.

The man in the green cloak sat up. They stood aloof from each other a moment before the pegasus approached him, not a little shyly. The human sat higher, one arm outstretched to run his fingers along the bandages. Sunshower’s good wing rose and gestured at his feet. They laughed. The human’s hand drew back, hesitant, then reached out to Sunshower’s shoulders and pulled her close. Their heads bumped together in a gentle headbutt.

Heartstrings blocked the stargazer’s line of sight. “Y’know, lad, that’s a bit rude.”

Star Swirl flicked his ears defensively. “How is it rude? I’m a fair distance away, I cannot be bothering them. I don’t think they can even see me.”

“Mayhap ye never heard of it, but ‘tis a thing called privacy. Afford them a little, if you please. Here, come away and look what he gave me.” The minstrel grinned and waved her tail, freshly brushed into soft, silky curls. At the base of her tail was a bow, a brilliant goldenrod that matched her eyes. The strands twirled and streamed as she cantered. “Isn’t it fine?”

The stargazer shrugged. “Yes, it’s nice. I suppose.” He never did know what to say about these sorts of things. There was only so much one could say about ribbons or lace or how many diamonds fit in a saddle.

“Oh, ‘tis the picture of how they wore ‘em in Dream Valley! And made of simple linen too. No lace or satin to get all mussed up from travel and easy to wash.”

Star Swirl began to point out that the Valley style of bows looked nothing like that. The tail was too long, the shape wasn’t round enough, and the whole thing was pointless unless the human tied his own hair in solidarity. But Heartstrings’ delighted smile kept him from saying so.

“Made it from the extra materials he had left over—t’was in the midst of making himself a new tunic all of greys an’ golds, turned out very nice if you’re wondering—so he decided to give me this bow. While he was busy making it, I taught him a unicorn traditional. The one Megan and everypony sang when the tyrant ram fell.”

“Bell of Freedom.” Star Swirl couldn’t help smiling at that. “ _Ring out the news, sing loud and clear/Come, for the day of liberation's here_. Appropriate, I must admit.”

“And easy to learn. One of the other humans—several of ‘em are  housed in there you see—they wanted to teach me a song of their own.” The mare waved her coiffed tail as she hummed a melody. “Something about a clan o’ entertainers advertising themselves to a talent agency. The others stopped him, though.”

“Why?” asked Star Swirl. “Was it a sacred hymn?”

Heartstrings clicked her tongue. “The way some clapped their hands o’er their babes’ ears, I very much doubt it.” She gasped and popped into the air like a firecracker. “Oh! Oh, and how sweet the wee darlings are!”

“…The bawdy singers?”

“The babes, dear. Try and keep up. Little humans start out like ours, round and chubbish, but the eyes are just the opposite. Big an’ wide, not small and beady. They all stuck close to their parents and beds o’course—‘tis a hospital, not a nursery—but a few let me get close. They were so curious, hands all o‘er me mane and back.” Heartstrings chuckled warmly. “Sweet things.”

The unicorns had wandered a good distance from the plane. Heartstrings meandered in the warm glow of her wonder, her neck stretching in all directions to see everything. She tread on Star Swirl’s hooves more than once. The tranquil hours in Sill proved the little ponies peaceful, or at least not an immediate threat. Around them, contradiction creatures roamed freely the noonday sun, engrossed in daily duties and private conversation. They had realized the unicorns didn’t speak their common language, and they moved in the natural way of humans.

Star Swirl paused to observe a circle of humans looming over a crinkled map. The one in the middle had one eye and his bare arms were lined in scars. The thinner man he spoke to bore close resemblance, perhaps a relative, lifted his head when they passed. Heartstrings waved. The rest of the humans looked up at the ponies, then looked at each other, curious and amused. A dark woman with braids chuckled.

“ _Saluton_ ,” said Heartstrings.

The one-eyed human jerked in surprise. So did Star Swirl. The woman laughed louder and called, “ _Bonan posttagmezo_!” She patted her companion’s knee and went back to the map.

Star Swirl tilted his head. “What did all that mean? And since when do you speak that language?”

“Oh, I don’t. I just know how to say ‘hello’. Helpful word to know.” The mare looked back as they walked away. “The one-eyed fellow is Hark, I think. I heard someone call him that.” She watched a knot of limber humans rush past, a pack of dogs running at their heels. Star Swirl thought he saw Cotterpin’s terrier in the crowd. In the distance, something crashed and a voice yelled in exasperation.

“Oh, Star Swirl,” Heartstrings sighed. “There are so many.”

Star Swirl examined his surroundings again. He frowned. Indeed, the number was comparatively great, more than either unicorn could ever hope to see at once. But the stargazer had been counting, and judging by the numbers he saw, the humans couldn’t total over five hundred. He could fit the entire species into House Galaxy’s courtyard with plenty room leftover.

“There are so few.” Star Swirl couldn’t help thinking Yarak’s brief intent for a nature preserve wasn’t misguided after all. Scattered all over the world in even smaller clusters… the breeding pairs did not bode well.

Heartstrings shrugged and flicked her tail. “Less than before, but still a fair amount. If ye recall, the little ponies of Dream Valley had a fraction of this number one upon a time. And just look how we turned out.” She patted her young friend’s shoulder. “I don’t think that trough-half-empty attitude’s good for ye, lad.”

“I’m not wrong, either.”

“If that’s what you prefer to...” Heartstrings squinted. “Is that Sunshower?”

Star Swirl followed the minstrel’s line of sight. Indeed, the pegasus approached in a steady trot. She held her head high and prim, sea-green tail flicking behind. A couple of nosy humans stalked along the high cliffs, following her path from a safe height. If she noticed them, she didn’t show it.

“Hello, Sunshower.” Heartstrings gently tilted her head. “Come back to get something?”

The bandaged mare blinked coolly. “I have not.” Her voice was smooth and even. Weathered. “I have returned.”

“Already? Ye cannae be serious.”

Sunshower’s placid face made it obvious that she was.

“But ye were there hardly half of an hour!”

“I was, yes. I do not see why that is important.” Sunshower grit her teeth as her injured leg caught a loose rock. She gently sat herself beside the unicorns. “It was the necessary time allotted. No more, no less.”

Background chatter trailed through the air. Strong-armed men sang a work song in the distance. A hound yapped after a gaggle of long-legged girls. The waterfalls hissed. The three ponies sat in silence.

Sunshower flicked an ear. “You are wondering why I did not stay longer.”

“Aye,” said both unicorns.

“I told you. I took the time that was necessary. There is no purpose in staying longer than I must. There are things ponies can change and there are things they cannot. An extra minute or an hour, it would change little. And I think…” Sunshower’s placid face twitched, a ripple blown across the water. “I think more harm than good would come of it. In those extra minutes there would be time for things to grow that should not grow. Time neither of us has. There are things to do, and we must do them.”  

The pegasus curled in the moss, resting her head on her good knee. She watched a cricket bounce on a blade of grass. “Make no mistake; I do not like it. I do not like it at all. But the liking of it or lack thereof is no consequence. I only wanted to know for certain he was well.”

Heartstrings wrinkled her brow and looked to Star Swirl, who lifted his eyebrows at her. What in stars’ name did she expect him to do? He was a stargazer, not a matchmaker. The minstrel knew more of these matters than he did.

Sunshower flicked her tail irritably. “Stop looking at me that way. Rival tribe or not, I have done nothing to you at all. Do not insult me with your pity.” She fidgeted in the moss. The splinted wing couldn’t get comfortable. “Bloodfeathers are plucked all the time and bleed until the wound heals. That is what they _do_. It is the natural risk and result of bloodfeathers. I am not the first pegasus to lose one and I will not be the last. Rail is unbroken in body and spirit. This is more than most mares ever get. I am very lucky. I am.”

The pegasus closed her eyes and tried her best to relax, for she was still quite tired. Her sides heaved slowly and dirt caked on her bandages. Dust blew away in little clouds as she breathed. Her tail flicked one way, then the other.

Sunshower stood. She moved too fast and the injured leg buckled under her. “I hope you are happy; I am now unsettled again.” She huffed and ran her teeth along her feathers in a slapdash preen. “Just as well. I still must coax the fastest…”

 Sunshower paused. Her ears drooped a few inches before she righted them again. The sunlight trembled in her eyes. “…the _second_  fastest runner in the Caulkins from her home. I must send word to the cloud shepherds of Sweet Water City. I do not know how long that will take and I… I should not let time go to waste. If you will excuse me.”

Heartstrings opened her mouth to argue, to voice her concern, but the pegasus shouldered past her and shoved the words down the unicorn’s throat. Star Swirl brushed back as she swept through the grass. She did not run (she wouldn’t dare), but marched in brisk, disciplined steps down and out of what was once her mountain. The humans, preoccupied in themselves and their troubles, cleared from her path but did not watch her go.

When he did not see yellow in the green and grey, Star Swirl cracked his neck and looked to the aircraft. “Well. ‘Tis my turn, then.”

 

* * *

 

Anais peeked through the curtain as she went back down. “Still a bit wet out there from last night’s drizzle. Watch your step.”

“I’ll remember that,” said Star Swirl. He shifted his hooves on the warm metal and inched forward.

A human sat cross-legged on the far end of the plane. The sun spread across his shoulders and the shade of the mountain slid into his lap. He hunched over something. There was a squeak and a snap.

Star Swirl gently cleared his throat.

The man straightened and beckoned the unicorn with a jerk of his neck. The grey poncho, bordered in yellow and white, slid off one shoulder and he was wrapped from toe to calf in gauze and reddened cotton.

The others were right, he looked well. His gaunt frame had filled out, and he held himself with casual vigor, just the way he’d been in the first few days of their travels together. But the human was smaller in ways the unicorn couldn’t name; worn and dim, heavy with knowledge. He smiled when Star Swirl approached him.

The unicorn blinked at the human’s lunch. The strawberry fruit bat looked like a little heart in his bandaged hands. Blood or juice (if there was a difference) leaked through his fingers.

“I didn’t think you’d be here so soon.” The man shifted guiltily. “Figured you’d still be exploring the mountain and asking questions before lunch was over. I know you’re uncomfortable with this sort of thing.”

“Nay, ‘tis no trouble on my behalf. I fed more than my share of wolves and bears in the carnival, you know. Nothing new to me.”

The human shrugged and Star Swirl tried not to cringe as he bit into the flesh. It smelled of berry cordial and the little green ribs broke under his thumb.

“In any case,” Star Swirl said, “I don’t think there was much exploring to be done. The humans don’t seem to care for me.”

The rest of the bat popped into the man’s mouth. In a sticky voice, he said, “I don’t think it’s you. Not really.”

Star Swirl looked into the distance. Little humans scampered all about Heartstrings, their voices piping and shrill with excitement. “I don’t see what else it could be.”    

The human rubbed his mouth with his sleeve and leaned forward on his knees. “You remember the earth ponies in Conemara? How some of them knew more than they knew? I think maybe it goes the other way. They feel your magic coming, they know from the shiver in their gut.” He peered at the mop of red hair bobbing near the plane’s broken wheels. “Humans and magic just don’t mix well.”

“Hmph.” The stargazer flipped his tail. “That doesn’t seem to stop Heartstrings.”

The human arched an eyebrow.

“What?”

“Heartstrings didn’t flatten Sill’s fog while she stood on a mountain full of humans. And she’s old. You’re still young—little younger than I am, I think—and if I remember _my_  myths right, sorcerers get stronger with age. Like dragons.”

The brown spidery fingers tapped Star Swirl’s newest bell, then the one next to it. “You’ve gotten better. And it’s been what, a year?”

“Not quite,” said Star Swirl. “Spring comes next month, but I met you in early summer. Still a-ways to go.”

“Hm. That’s right, I left home in spring. The pigeon eggs hadn’t hatched yet.” The human was quiet then. He rubbed his shoulders and looked at his feet. “They’ll be grown up by now. If the frost hasn’t killed them. Or the cats. …Or the hawks. I don’t even know if the aviary’s still standing.” The man sighed, light and soft. “Guess I’ll find out, by and by. We’re leaving soon.”

 “What?” The unicorn’s ears shot up. “Leaving? All of you? How? When?”

“All that’ll come. Some think we shouldn’t go. I don’t either. It doesn’t feel like it in the Caulkins, but it’s still winter right now and winter’s dangerous. I think we should wait, though I’m sure we won’t.” The human reached out to Star Swirl’s withers. The unicorn had begun to fidget. “Old Colin and Mori and a bunch of others rode out this morning, up towards North Hill. Anais says they’re looking for our ride, whatever that means. We’re going out to find what’s left of the homes the Roc took us from.”

Star Swirl pawed at the rusted steel. He settled beside the human, resting his chin on the bony knee. “Yours as well?”

“Yeah…” The man absently scratched the base of Star Swirl’s neck. Pink mane gnarled through his fingers. “I’m a little scared to go.”

“Why?” The unicorn glanced up, angling his shoulders toward the hand.

Taking the hint, the hand moved down and scratched Star Swirl’s shoulder blades. “I think you can only go so far from your home before it stops being home. I know I could always make a new one but…I dunno.” He ran the other hand through his hair. “So few speak my language. I’m learning theirs, but it’s slow going.”

“But surely they are glad to have you.”

“Naturally. It’s always good to have more genes in the pool. I make them nervous, though.”

Star Swirl bumped his nose against the man’s arm. “You’re still new. They’ll get used to you.”

“It’s not just that. I’ve had magic in me and I wouldn’t be surprised if some was still in there.” The human popped his back and swung his legs over the plane’s sides. “Nobody’s said anything, but I think Ashling knows. About Cinquefoil. If she knows, then everybody knows.”  

The stargazer pulled his tail close to himself. “Are you still upset with me for that?”

“I am.”

Star Swirl’s shoulders sank as he looked away.

“There’s nothing worse you could do to a childless human, Star Swirl. Yes, I’m upset and I will be for a long time.” The human patted the unicorn’s side. “But I understand. That’s enough, maybe. It’s alright.”

This, Star Swirl knew, was untrue. The spell that wove the skin of Cinquefoil was strong magic, but it was still just magic and would fade with time. But the unicorn would bear the enchantment of error for as long as he lived, if not in the human’s heart, then in his own. “Truly, I am sorry.”

The human looked at him. His eyes were larger than they used to be, the color of the irises richer. Not unlike Ashling’s. “Would you do it differently, given the chance?”

Star Swirl slowly opened his mouth, then closed it. His silence spoke for him.

“Don’t be sorry, then,” the man said. “Besides, humans are in the world again and I get to be among them.” Shadows swept over them. He craned his neck to see a pair of humans, silhouetted by the sun as they walked Sill’s rough surface. His hand absently brushed the yellow feather tucked behind his ear. “It’s a fair trade. Nothing’s free, you know.”

“Does it make you happy, at least?”

“It might. Our kind doesn’t always know when they’re happy and have a bad habit of finding out only after the moment’s passed. By the way, I have something for you.”

Star Swirl cocked his head as the human offered his open palm, crisscrossed in gauze and scrapes. “Um. Where… is it?”

The man laughed. “Put your hoof there.”

The unicorn did and the human gripped him at the fetlocks and shook, once and firm.

“My name is Rail, son of Sconce and Castor, brother to none. I come from the city of high towers.”

A smile bloomed across Star Swirl’s face. “Star Swirl, of House Galaxy. First and only son of Crescent Curve and Stardazzle the Second, brother to Starburst and Starbeam. Well met, Rail.” Thank you.”

Rail smiled back. “You’re welcome, Star Swirl.”

“Still, I wish there was something I could do for you in return.”

For a moment or two, the human didn’t say anything. He fetched the feather from his ear and gently rolled it between his fingertips, watching the light play along the shaft. “Actually, there is.”

“Name it.”

“Go home.”

Star Swirl’s smile deflated into a flat, sullen line. “I rescind my offer.”

Rail crossed his arms and smirked. “Too late, you already said it.”

“Truly, you are the most cruel and vicious of contradiction creatures.”

 

Rail just laughed, breathy and short. He twirled the feather in his fingers and sighed as his face turned serious again. “Go home to your House and kin, Star Swirl. While you still have one to go to. Perfect your Talent and look to your own.”

Star Swirl searched Rail’s expression. He was quite serious. The unicorn flattened his ears. “Yes, but…”

“You only had to get married because you couldn’t cast spells, right?”

“More or less…”

 “Seems you’ve gotten over that.” Rail jingled the bronze bell on Star Swirl’s collar. “What’s this one for?”

“Teleportation of foreign objects. I found the missing wing to a plane—this one, I think—and moved it to my room…” Star Swirl’s ears flattened further.

The human was right. Since the transformation spell, the path of magic widened, stretching long and out to him, a path that spiraled farther by the second. It overwhelmed him still, too strong to fully control and left him spent when it was over. Still, magic came when he called. He saw the elegant stitches of magic threading through the world, and he knew how to cut and sew, how to manipulate the seams and turn them in on themselves. Star Swirl knew magic and magic knew him. Perhaps more than any unicorn ever had. Neither Star Swirl nor his horn was hollow.

“But…but even so!”

Rail blinked at him, waiting.

“Even so, I…” Star Swirl stamped in frustration. “I do not wish to!”

“Why?”

“Because I do not like other ponies!” The answer burst from him like a parasite. “I don’t. Where humans are brave, ponies are cowardly. Where you are curious and foolish and steadfast, unicorns are stubborn and sensible and floundering and… and _safe_.”

The sour word twisted Star Swirl’s face. “They care not for discovery, they care not for knowledge for knowledge’s sake, they care not for magic at all! I have been to the universities and I have spoken to the masters and all of them, they treat magic—endless, beautiful, dauntless, glorious magic—as naught but a…a tool. As if it were any common garden hoe! Aye, they craft, but never do they discover or wonder. Never ‘why’ or ‘how’ or ‘when’. Only ‘practicality’, ‘convenience’, and ‘tradition’.

“I do not like other ponies. I never have. I…” Star Swirl took a breath and lowered his voice. The other humans were peering at them. “I want to go with you.”

Rail laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. “No, Star Swirl. You can’t. You know how the Megan stories end: I go back to my house, you go back to your house.” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “And I think some singing and rainbows are involved, but we can skip that part.”

The unicorn flipped his tail and snorted. “You are not Megan and you do not have a house.”

“Details.” Rail pulled his legs up and leaned to face the unicorn, both hands resting on his knees. “And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but _you’re_  a pony too, Star Swirl. Nothing’s kept you from thinking beyond the fence, who’s to say other ponies can’t do the same? Things change.”

“I don’t know.” The unicorn flicked his ears and smoothed the edge of his cape. “I know ponies better than you do. They’re stubborn to change. ‘Tis in our nature.”

“Nature?” Rail straightened his back and let out a short, sharp bark of laughter. “ _Nature_?” The human spread his arms out to Sill and the airplane, to the sparkling streams below and the blue, uncut sky above. “For mercy’s sake, Star Swirl, look where we are! Do you know how many things this mountain has seen? How many owners it’s had? What it looked like a hundred years ago, or fifty, or just yesterday? Nature changes all the time and people change with it. Ponies too, probably.”

Rail relaxed his shoulders and patted Star Swirl’s neck. “Besides, Ashling is coming with us and I don’t like the idea of you two together.”

The human and the unicorn leaned to look over the edge of the plane. Ashling looked back at them, rocking back on her heels as she wiggled her fingers at them.

Star Swirl frowned. “In that, you may have a point. But…” He swished his pink tail and shuffled his shoulders. “But still, do you think it would be alright if we stayed here? Just a little while longer?”

“That,” Rail said, “would be more than alright.”

The scroll rolled from Star Swirl’s hooves over the human’s feet and to the tail of the airplane. “Good, because I brought a few questions to ask.”

“See, this is exactly why I told you to go last.”


	23. Where the Song Met the Stars

The dragon arrived at midnight. She lounged on Sill’s broken sides, her coils dangling from caldera to canyon. The crowd braced themselves against the wind of dragonwing as the wyvern settled, squinting as her amber eyes lit the rocks like spotlights. A broken, rusty pickup truck dangled from her claws.

The humans were well prepared to greet her. Idris saw them coming through the spyglass and told Anais, who told Hark, who told everyone else. By the time the dragon’s belly scraped the mountain, all of Under Hill was awake and abuzz with activity. The supplies and livestock was already crated and packed, a third of all they had, with the rest left for the humans too ill or old or unwanting to leave Sill’s mossy belly. Igoe walked along the scree and oversaw the loading of supplies. Her husband Pruitt managed the loading of people, skirting through Under Hill for stragglers and fence-sitters as he triple-checked his lists.

The wyvern looked over the Caulkin Mountains, untrusting of the clouds and curious of the little humans gathered around her. She twitched the tip of her tail as they climbed over her scales and tied down their belongings, the smaller ones poking at her claws. The light of her eyes washed over the human standing on the bridge of her nose, his white whiskers fluttering in the wind.

She keened low in her throat. “Oh, Colin. I am still not used to you being so old. You were a hatchling when I saw you last.”

“Nothing that can be helped, I’m afraid.” The wrinkled elder patted her warm scales. “But better late than never, huh?”

“I didn’t think there would be so many. The hoard was less than half of this before.” The dragon’s voice clinked and rolled like handfuls of new money. “You have reproduced so quickly! Like rabbits, you are.”

Colin laughed warmly. “I told you before, there are more here than just your hoard. We’re from everywhere.” He pointed to Anais, Martin, and the group surrounding them. “Those are the children of griffon riders. The one on your haunches are Pruitt and Igoe, their people are nomads from the northeast and northwest, respectfully. And those paler ones near the cave—see them?—they used to work in Diamond Dog mines.”

“Oh,” said the wyvern. “Were they slaves of the dogs? Or was it the other way around?”

“A little of both, I hear. Oh! And here come the wanderers of the southwest. Our chieftain Hark…” Colin paused and looked back at amber eyes the size of his head. “You know Hark, right? He met us when we landed?”

”Yes.”  She squinted at a figure stomping over Sill, barking orders. “He has one eye and walks strangely.”

“Hark comes from the central nomads. I think Rail does too, give or take a generation from his mom’s side. He’s the one I told you about.”

The dragon rolled her eyes. “You told me of many.”

“He’s the newest one. Braved the White Roc.”

The wyvern’s whiskers bristled as she growled low in her throat. “I don’t care for that Roc. I don’t like the grey pony with him, either.” Her tail smashed against the mountain and sent the goats into a bleating frenzy. “They cheat.”

“That they do.” Colin climbed to the edge of the snout and waved an arm. “Rail!”

A young man in a green cloak looked up. He clutched a chunk of goat cheese in one hand and practiced his signing with the other. Sydney the linguist sat with him, gently correcting the mistakes.

“Yes?” His tongue was still thick with his native accent and his sentences were brisk and simple.

“Come and meet Pop!” called Collin.

Rail frowned at the wyvern and exchanged glances with Sydney, who shrugged. He pushed himself up with his hackberry staff and approached the dragon with no sudden movements. He seemed a little afraid of her, which was ridiculous (everyone knew humans hunted dragons, not the other way around).

“Hello.” His cloak flowed in the steaming breath of dragon nostrils. “Are you our ride?”

“Am I your ride? I am. Collin and the one called Pruitt told me you are to ride in front, alongside my Collin. I am called Pop.” Pop’s nose twitched. “You smell like ponies.”

Rail blinked. Riding on the dragon’s head was obviously news to him, but he took it in stride. “I… lived with ponies for a long time,” he explained.

“Interesting. Ponies used to live where I live, but they don’t anymore. Now I live there instead and eat geodes.” A contented growl rumbled through her. “They are very good geodes!”

“Why’s your name Pop?” Ashling asked.

Rail yelped and jumped back from the girl standing behind him. He hadn’t seen her arrive. Nobody ever did, but Rail still wasn’t used to it yet.

The wyvern chuckled. The numerous bare feet on her back tickled. The elders and families with younger children were already seated and tied down. Now the rest of the humans roved up and down her scales looking for their place to sit. Little Fava sat with her mother and waved at Rail from Pop’s back haunch, but he didn’t see her.

“Why is my name my name? I will show you!” The wyvern spat a stream of bright acid that steamed and sparked and popped in the night air.

“Oh, wow.” Ashling bounced on her toes and giggled. She was still too young to do a proper witch’s cackle. “Gosh, you must have made the ponies of North Hill absolutely _miserable_!”

“Probably. I never bothered to ask them.” Pop looked over her shoulder. The last handfuls of humans settled themselves between her shoulder blades. Hark and Pruitt stood on her neck, performing a final headcount. “Hatchling, are you riding upon my head as well?”

Ashling rocked back on her heels and grinned. “Yep!”

Rail frowned. Apparently nobody had told him of this part, either.

“You’re riding at the horns,” said Colin. “We need someone to scout out magic stuff. Just like Rail and I are up here on account of knowing the land.”

Rail piped up in protest. “But I only know the lands from here to my city.”

Colin waved him off. “Still know it better than most of us. And if what you told Hark is true, most of the maps are no good anymore. Something’s better than nothing.” He nodded to Pop, who gently took Rail in her claws and placed him on her forehead. Ashling already lounged in a spiraled horn as if it were a papasan chair.

Colin leaned and cupped his hands over his mouth. “We all here?”

A keen whistle ran from the base of Pop’s tail to the top of her head. Hark’s gloved hand gave the affirmative: All here. Old and young, foolish and wise. The healers, the warmongers, the thieves, and the law-keepers. The craven and the courageous, the careless and the cautious and the cruel, and some that were none of these, all of these, or somewhere in-between.

Indeed, they were here. They all were alive and they were here. In the long shadows cast by fire flowers and plague and White Roc and warfare, their numbers were smaller, but still here.

As Mount Sill lifted away from them, the fever of freedom spread soul to soul, hotter and hotter until someone in back could stand it no longer and began to sing. Someone else joined him. Then another. And then another and another and another until the song wound up and up into a wild chorus that sailed over the Caulkin Mountains.

The song drifted down to the trio of ponies watching from the foot of Sill. Their twitching ears caught the notes like fireflies in summer. It echoed between the peaks long after the humans breached the starry horizon, out of this story and into another.


End file.
